15-18 August
New York is a city we have both visited many times but never together, at leisure. So we felt quite exhilarated in deciding how we would spend our time.
But beforehand, we retraced our route down the Atlantic coast, with the weather no better than on our outbound journey. However the sun was shining when we arrived in the new bright, sky-lit Moynihan Train Hall. This is across the road from Penn station, in the Farley Post Office building, originally built just a couple of years after the historic Penn Station and in the same style. The sun gave us a spring in our step as we negotiated the 7 blocks to our new hotel.
Chris had brought to Maine, Peter’s suit and a dress, bag and shoes for Lynne, so we now looked rather incongruous, carrying a suit carrier alongside a rucksack! These extra items were not intended to allow us to pass muster with the dress code on the Cunard Liner as we set sail from New York, but rather for the wedding we are attending in Italy on our onward journey.
We had allowed ourselves three nights in New York for contingencies, as we cannot afford to miss the Queen Mary 2, which makes the passage from New York to Southampton only once a month.
So how did we choose to spend our time? We did an awful lot of walking. First twenty blocks to the Gramercy Tavern, a restaurant Peter wanted to revisit, then all the way to The Battery from 40th and then to Central Park for a run! Lynne was distressed to see that her old employer EY had vacated their office in Times Square, where she had sometimes worked!
We spent the best part of our first full day, walking to the south tip of Manhattan to visit the Memorial to the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
We took our time enjoying the streets of Manhattan, stopping variously en-route. The streets are now more friendly to non-motorists, with wider sidewalks and cycle lanes and the Covid-inspired outdoor eating shacks, which spill out onto the roadside.
At the World Trade Center, the two Memorial pools provided a really thoughtful remembrance, the most poignant, being to the huge number of First Responders who lost their lives.
We visited the Park at The Battery which has undergone huge improvements in the last eight years and as a result was very busy.
We decided to take the subway back to our hotel. The explanations on the web site and at the station were not clear, and having each bought a single ride ticket, we were denied access to the subway platforms. Yet again we were forced to take an unauthorised way to get on the platform. Exiting the transportation system was easier this time!
Our second day saw us walk back and forth to Central Park, enjoying a fantastic run around the park when we got there. We’d both forgotten that it isn’t exactly flat! We later visited the Guggenheim Museum, by metro. We had done some more research, and realised that we could just tap our debit cards to use the subway, so we had a more successful trip uptown and back.
At the Guggenheim, we were thrilled to see the Thannhauser Collection of Impressionist and post-impressionist art, including thirty works by Picasso. The modern art exhibitions on the spiral walkways left us cold, however.
Very Modern Early Picasso
As it was our last night in New York, we walked to a local steakhouse on the Westside, to enjoy a proper New York strip steak. Excellent! We had also enjoyed a drink in our hotel’s rooftop bar, the previous evening, where the lights of Manhattan inspired us: perhaps tinged with a bit of nostalgia, as it would be unlikely we would stay here again.
We enjoyed our visit to Manhattan. The pavements continue to be energetic and busy, but the Mayor is trying to make pedestrians in the city king or queen. Expect congestion charging for motorists in 2024. Perhaps it seemed less frenetic because we weren’t here for work!
