The City That Never Sleeps
Just around the corner from our hotel is a landmark that has been featured in movies from King Kong to Sleepless in Seattle. It has been seen in nearly every single TV show that is or pretends to take place in New York, and has become the skyscraper symbol of New York City.
EMPIRE STATE BUILDING
The Empire State Building is a 102-story Art Deco skyscraper at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and 34th Street. It stood as the world's tallest building for more than forty years, from its completion in 1931 until construction of the World Trade Center's North Tower was completed in 1972. Following the destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001, the Empire State Building again became the tallest building in New York City and New York State.
After lining up to get tickets, winding your way through security and metal detectors, we finally enter the elevator that will take us partway to the observation deck on the 86th floor. One more elevator from there and we are outside looking down on New York City... the views are amazing.
It seems that even the pigeons come up here to check out the chilly views... North to Central Park and Harlem, West to the Hudson River and New Jersey, East to the East River and Brooklyn, and South to Greenwich Village, Soho and the Financial District. Just to the right of Wall Street, out in the harbour, the statue of liberty stands in the haze of the mid-day sun.
Funny how in the movies it always seemed so big on the viewing platform, as the violins played, and the star-crossed lovers ran across the platform into each others arms... yeah right, first of all it's only 4 feet wide, and second of all there's too many people to run more than a couple feet. After re-enacting several of the famous love scenes of our favourite movies, we decide to get out of the cold wind and head back down in the elevator to sea level.
Maybe it was altitude sickness, or maybe the cold weather froze part of my cerebral cortex, but I decided that since they were talking about possible snow the next day, maybe we should do the "Circle Tour" boat cruise, instead of heading into Greenwich Village. It seemed like a good idea.
First stop is Macy's, according to their sign, they are the World's Largest Store. It is huge, an entire block long with many floors of perfumes and designer clothes. What the sign doesn't say is "The World's Largest Store, with the World's Largest prices"... a plain shirt, $350... seeya!
They were the famous home of "Miracle on 34th Street", and had a major campaign going on promoting the Letter to Santa depot. Sadly we were there only 1 week before the huge blimps and floats would pass right here for the Macy's Thanksgiving day parade. Just missed it. Not sure what would be scarier, a giant Spongebob Squarepants, or the Resistance 2 mural on this building?
In what seemed like a good idea at the time, we made our way past one of the largest collection of police cars and vehicles I have ever seen, turns out the president of France was in town. We took the long walk past the Majestic post office to the Hudson River where we could catch a boat tour that would take us around the Statue of Liberty and Lower Manhattan.
Turns out the walk took a little longer than we expected, it also turns out that I should have checked the non-summer schedule for when the boats run. We just missed the 1 hour tour by 5 minutes, and the next (and only) tour of the day was 3 hours, and didn't leave for another hour and a half... we couldn't go because we needed to leave for the Canucks game on Long Island before the boat would be back. That was a colossal waste of time, oh well.
We walked back up 52nd street, and checked out some of the towers bordering the Lower West Side and Midtown, and answered the age old question "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?", it's not practice, practice, practice... apparently you just turn left at 7th Ave.
New York Islanders
My original plan to get to the Islanders-Canucks game was to book a car, have him drive us there, and pick us up after. It is about an hour out of Manhattan to the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island. When I tried to arrange that with the concierge, he's like, "oh no, just take the Long Island Railroad" He tells us we can catch it across the street and get off at Nassau.
Great we think, $29 compared to over $200... small problem. When we arrive at our stop, we are in the middle of a residential area called Garden City. There's no taxi's here, and according to a woman that was on the train, we are still a long ways from the arena. She points us down the road to an area we might be able to find a cab, or a phone. So we walk several blocks through a very nice treed suburb with nice big colonial style homes, not a taxi to be seen, everyone drives here.
Of course I left my cell at the hotel, who needs it at a hockey game? So we stop at a donut shop, and a customer gives us a local cab companies #, and points us to a pay phone. I call the number and am told they don't have any cabs in our area, I plead with them, and they give me a number of another cab company. I call them, "Sorry, we don't have any taxis available.", they give me another taxi company, and I only have enough coin for 1 more call... "they'll be there in 10-15 minutes".
As the puck drops on the Canucks-Islanders game, we are standing in a donut shop parking lot waiting for a taxi in Suburbia, USA. Luckily it doesn't take him long to arrive, but's a good 10 minute drive to the arena. He tells us that it was lucky we got off at that station and not the next one at Hempstead, because it wouldn't be a good area to be standing around trying to get a taxi. When we finally get to Nassau Coliseum, it's 10 minutes into the game, and the Canucks are leading 1-0. We take our seats, and unveil our Canucks jerseys to the crowd. We're not alone.
There's a lot of history in the building, and with this team... a dynasty before the Oilers took over in the mid-80's. At the intermission kids are booing us as we walk up the stairs to get some food, you have to love the passion for a team that isn't a dynasty anymore. Sadly we wouldn't see our team score another goal and it ends 1-1, then we lose in a shootout. 1 point, not a real loss.
Our taxi driver gave us his card and told us to call him when the game was over, and he would pick us up at the Marriott hotel. When we get to the hotel, they won't send a taxi because there already is taxis there, small problem... there wasn't. Finally a taxi shows up, and a group of us are standing around, he asks everyone "where are you going?"... then says "OK, I'll take the 5 people going to the train station." So Norine and I cram into the front seat, and three Islander fans pile into the back seat. Luckily we had our jackets on, and no one asked... We all split the fare.
The train ride back was made more interesting when the conductor checks our tickets, "This train only goes as far as Jamaica station, you should have waited for the next train." Obviously I'm concerned, and ask what we should do, and another passenger tells us that a train will come along right where we get off. The conductor says "that one will pass us, so you may have to wait a while.", after we get off at Jamaica Station, we waited only 2 minutes before it came, no worries.
Back in Manhattan, Norine was a little worried I would get caught taking this picture in Penn Station, but how can you pass up a picture of a police officer standing in line at Dunkin' Donuts?
After a less than spectacular day of misguided travels, tomorrow we'll stay closer to home. This becomes even more evident when we learn in the morning that two trains on the LIRR have crashed at the Jamaica station, the same station that we had to change trains... gulp.