We didn't start with much of a plan our second day in New York, other than we knew that we'd meet up with my brother later.
My brother has lived in NYC for a little over two years. First in the Village, now in Brooklyn. He has had an assortment of odd jobs -- canvassing for local politicians, giving piano lessons, working a desk job at the transportation department; but right now he's a production assistant on a Bollywood movie.
His main job, from what he's told me, is to help transport people from once place to another in New Jersey, where they are shooting. Pretty much every Bollywood movie is a musical, and he said for this one, the producers wanted to have a dance scene in Times Square. With the dancers suspended in a tank of water. Being driven around.
What could possibly go wrong?
I don't know who explained to them that it was a terrible idea (especially if they are trying to save money -- it was cheaper for them to fly their whole production crew in from India than to hire locals).
Back to day two.
We headed north on Lexington to "Bagles and More" and grabbed some breakfast - scrambled eggs on a bagel and a couple extra sesame seed bagels for later. This turned out to become a reoccurring plan, as we'd usually buy a couple extra bagels in the morning (at 80 cents a pop) and have them for lunch with an apple or other snack.
We took our breakfast to Bryant Park and enjoyed the weather. It looked like it might hold out, but the rain would catch up to us later in the day.
After enjoying our time at the park (and being accompanied by a couple birds begging for crumbs and an impromptu musical performance by a small assembly of brass players), and afterward checked out Grand Central Terminal. It was pretty neat but I have to admit it was a little smaller than I thought it would be. They had a free exhibit on NY and the movies, with some backdrops from the 1930's and some still frames from different movies shot in the Big Apple.
After Grand Central, we walked over to the U.N. I'm assuming they didn't have the flags up because it was Sunday.
Munched on some apples in front of the library.
Then a rest back at the hotel.
Talked to my brother, it would be a little longer for him to get over from Jersey to meet us. He'd be coming in at Penn Station, so we just decided to meet him there.
After dropping his stuff off at our room, we made our first subway ride of NY. Headed down (the 6?) down to the Brooklyn Bridge. When we emerged it had started to rain. We considered turning back away from the bridge, but decided to chance it.
As it turned out it didn't rain too hard, and Aimee and I took shelter under our small umbrella as my umbrellaless (wow, spell check tells me that is a word) brother felt the brunt of the small drops.
The walk out on the bridge was fantastic. I would definitely recommend it.
We decided to head over to Ground Zero after the bridge. Along the way Jon bought an umbrella from a street vendor. They went for $3 but he talked her down to $2.50.
Ground Zero was interesting. We just saw it from the east side, not a great vantage point, but the sheer size or real estate that is empty is impressive. We looked at some of the photos and read about the plans for the Freedom Tower.
After Ground Zero was Wall Street, passing St. Paul's Chapel along the way.
We left lower Manhattan for dinner. At the suggestion of my brother we went to Vittorio on Bleecker Street in the Village. Good, yes. But a little pricey. Portions could have been a little better, too, as I left a little hungry after my Ravioli (the idea, as with an actual Italian restaurant, is that you order an appetizer, pasta, and a main course... but we wanted some money left over for the rest of the trip -- I figured we could get a snack later).
When we got back to the hotel after the long walk up 5th Ave from Washington Square Park admiring the Empire State Building all the way -- yes, we are tourists, we look up at buildings. We watched a little of the Democratic Debate on CNN. Go Kucinich! We said our goodbye to Jon and headed out in search of a snack. It was raining pretty well by this point, so we settled on something easy -- Starbucks pastries with hot chocolate.
Walking in the rain wasn't very fun, so we hoped it would clear up soon. We turned out to have pretty good luck with the weather the rest of the trip ...
Posted by alangage at June 19, 2007 10:44 PM
Comments
Post a comment
