Our original plan for our visit to New York City (a place that Ooma has never visited) called for 2 days touring Manhattan via the Big Red Bus hop-on, hop-off routes and one day driving to Wave Hill and Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. But then, as mentioned previously, Ooma came down with COVID-19. For the THIRD time (does Guiness have a category for this?). She had a fever of 102 Tuesday morning and we left VA as quickly as possible. She was quite sick all day Tuesday and we quarantined in our Staten Island hotel room all day Wednesday. She felt a bit better Thursday and we took a driving tour of Manhattan. On Friday she was well on her way to recovery – no fever at all and only a few aches. She relapsed a bit late Friday but I trust that she will be much better Saturday.
First, let me tell you my impression of Staten Island (a place I have traveled through but never stayed in). I like it. It is more suburban than Queens, Brooklyn or the Bronx and more laid-back than other places within an hour of Manhattan, such as Jersey City, Westchester County or Greenwich CT. We are really amazed that a place like this exists just a 30-minute ferry ride from lower Manhattan. If I were to live in NYC (not likely) I think this is where I would look.
We ate in our hotel room all four days. I picked up some Panera chicken noodle soup for Ooma Tuesday night (I had a sub), then we did takeout pizza from Pizza D’Oro on Wednesday. It got great reviews and was obviously a wildly popular place – I had to wait an hour for my pizza and they actually ran out of dough after making mine – but we thought it was only mediocre. Thursday night was 494 Chicken which Ooma really liked, but I thought it was overcooked and overpriced. Friday night was Chinese from Oriental Plaza. Again, good reviews but mediocre (or less) food. I got tempura as an appetizer and it was soggy. Never had soggy tempura before. Never want it again.
So I can’t say that Staten Island is a gourmet paradise.
One highlight of our stay was the driving tour of Manhattan. Google estimated the tour would take less than 3 hours but I thought it would be closer to 4. It was actually almost 5. But it was a (mostly) pleasant trip – as pleasant as driving in Manhattan gets. I was able to give Ooma a taste of the city and she liked it very much. It was over 80 miles of city driving, which will kill my overall TN8 mileage, I suppose, and God knows how much I racked up in bridge tolls – possibly as much as $50 – but it was worth it. It was great to get Ooma out of the medical ward for an afternoon and take her to a place she has never been.
The photos from this tour were taken by Ooma, from the car – mostly while in motion – and through the windshield, so they are fairly low-quality. But she got some very nice bridge shots.
She got a few nice shots of the city, too, but it is impossible to get shots of tall buildings from a car at street level.
I had actually bought 2 2-day tickets for the Big Red Bus, at a cost of $160. I tried to get a refund but failed. Ooma, not to be deterred, took up the challenge and got the refund. She is a woman of many talents.
A second highlight was a visit to the Staten Island Ferry. We didn’t actually go aboard, but was saw the ferry and the waiting room and confirmed that the ferry is, indeed, free. If Ooma had been 100% healthy we would have gone to Manhattan, looked around a bit and returned, but in the interest of the public health we passed. We also confirmed that parking at the ferry for a day trip was shockingly inexpensive – $10 for 5 hours. That is like parking in Ft Myers. I really expected that it would cost $30 or more to park at the ferry.
I expected that a third highlight would be the Snug Harbor Botanical Garden. There is a wide variety of attractions at this location, including the Staten Island Museum and the Children’s Museum, but we only wanted to visit the botanical garden. Boy, were we disappointed! It looked like it had been abandoned. Overgrown, unkempt. It looked like it had been a lovely place 10 years ago, but it is a mess now. It reminded me of The Secret Garden before the kids found the key.
On Saturday we planned to stop by for lunch with Alice, my high school civics teacher, on our way to Massachusetts. But Ooma’s COVID test still showed positive (mine still showed negative), so we cancelled that stop.
Not quite the trip to New York City that we had planned.
Our hotel in Staten Island was the Fairfield Inn. Adequate but not spectacular. The breakfast was free, but not as good as at some of the other hotels. And no Keurig, which made getting morning coffee a bit more difficult. Our view was a CubeSmart storage building. The stuff of dreams, right?