We drove up Saturday morning from Philadelphia. The route took us through New Jersey, which was more industrialized than I was expecting. Really not a ton of neighborhoods, just a lot of industrial plants and factories. Soon enough the massive skyline was visible. It was a little weird to look at the skyline and not recognize it. We took a tunnel beneath the bay to pop out just a few block from Times Square; the pumping heart of tourist New York City.
Times Square in the morning was interesting but we decided we needed a better view of the city in order to determine where we needed to go. But first we got hungry for lunch. More precisely; hungry for New York style pizza. $3 got us two very large slices and a soda. As good as advertised.
Then we headed to the Rockefeller Center for the best view of the city. Pro tip: take a stroller with you, they let us cut all the lines with stroller. Very nice people these New Yorkers.
70 floors up provides some pretty fantastic views.
We could see to Lower Manhattan (clear in the back of the top pic) and all the way over Central Park to Harlem and even to the Bronx. This gave us a great perspective of the city. Adaline even snuck a quick snack in on top of the Rock (she hadn't gotten any pizza).
From the Rockefeller Center we traversed to Central Park. It didn't look that far and we wanted to soak up some rays in what might be the most famous and over-crowded green space in America.
We stopped for some chicken over rice at one of the food carts but it was not as good as the food in Philadelphia. Someone should investigate this.
After some hanging in the sun, we all needed to use the washroom. Fortunately, the LDS temple/stake center is just a couple of blocks from Central Park. How handy! We saw the missionaries giving tours and saw the familiar carpet on the walls. Once we were inside of the building, it felt so much like a regular meeting house that you could forget that you were in the middle of the loudest city in the world.
Each generation has an event that you remember exactly where you were when you found out that the world as you knew it was very different from your reality. Both the Mrs. and I remember where we were when the World Trade Center towers came down. In our one short day, we felt we should pay homage to an event that changed America yet again.
This required taking a more-confusing-than-Chicago subway clear to the southern tip of Manhattan. The trek was absolutely worth it. In my opinion the two dark, cavernous pits that serve as memorials rival any memorial in the world. We didn't have time to tour any of the museums and other sites and so it is a site that we will have to visit again.
From that sobering and meaningful experience, we wandered our ways towards the Brooklyn Bridge. What an incredible engineering feat from 1883. And still used very heavily. Pretty much everyone was on there way to or from Brooklyn. We wandered halfway across before turning back in search of food.
With a little bit difficulty we found a delicious Asian fusion place in Chinatown where we consumed curry and mango chicken. Then we found ourselves waiting in line for Japanese style ice-cream and, more specifically, cones. They were freshly cooked waffle cones in the shape of fish.
Sometime during dinner the sun had set and it was quite dark by the time we finished our ice cream. There was just last one stop, one we had already been to. Times Square at night is another experience worth anyone's time. The closest thing that we have to an ancient Constantinople or Jerusalem. The centerpiece of Western culture in this era of globalization. Culture starts and ends in that square and we felt the pulse of the world for a minute.
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