Marlene and I spent Friday in New York City. We experienced the Staten Island Ferry, Trinity Church, the 9-11 Memorial (just the memorial – we didn’t go into the museum), Wall Street, the South Street Seaport, the Brooklyn Bridge (which we walked over), the New York subway system, Times Square, Central Park (just a view) and Fifth Avenue. Whew! We logged over 21,000 steps – probably over 10 miles on foot. Everything was novel to Marlene. The 9-11 Memorial was new to me (it was a hole in the ground when I last visited in 2002), as was the Staten Island Ferry and the walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. Even the things I had seen before were very different than I recalled, so it was all pretty new to me, too.
The choice of the Staten Island Ferry was not because it was the cheapest or fastest way to get into Manhattan from Newark – that probably would have been the PATH train to Penn Station. But I really wanted to experience the ferry. The idea that a 30-minute ferry ride on a $200 million vessel could be completely free just boggled my mind. It didn’t disappoint. The ferry was HUGE – a passenger capacity in excess of 5.000.
The walk on the Brooklyn Bridge was also a surprise. I had no idea that so many people walked this bridge. It was crowded and the entire route – well over a mile – was lined with vendors. Some of the art in the subway was also a pleasant surprise as my memory of the MTA was dark, drab and dirty.
All-in-all, a very good sightseeing day – our 4th in a row. A travel day will be a pleasant respite.
