NYC Tourists

I brought our TV along this trip, and I attached my little antenna on the top of the boat.  Usually, I can get about a half dozen stations when we're close to a town.  I turned it on last night, and we could receive 78 stations.  Unfortunately, only about five of them were in a language I understand.

We left our anchorage early, and made our way to Liberty Landing Marina.  It is right across the river from Manhattan, so it's technically in New Jersey.  A very nice marina.  (Of course it costs twice as much as marinas I consider expensive.)

Pam wanted to tour New York City, so we rode a ferry across the river, and walked down to Battery Park to catch a "Hop-on, Hop-off" tour bus.  Between where the ferry landed, and Battery Park, we saw signs pointing to ground zero.  We managed to find our way there, but there was a very long line of people, and you needed to have some pre-approved pass that we didn't know about.  So on to Battery Park.  We decided to take both the Downtown tour and the Uptown tour.  We were supposed to be able to change from the Downtown bus to the Uptown bus at Times Square.  However......................the United Nations is in session today.  President Obama was speaking there, as well as the Iranian fellow everyone likes so well.  We heard on the VHF that the East River was closed to navigation because of the UN stuff, and today, we discovered that half the city streets were also closed.  Not a great day for a bus tour.  I don't know if the traffic was worse than normal, but our tour bus driver said he couldn't get to Times Square, so if we wanted to change buses, we should get off, and walk up 2 blocks and over 3 blocks to get to the other bus.

So, we started walking, and pretty soon we came to the Rockefeller Center.  Easy enough to recognize if you've ever seen the Today Show.  They had some concert stage set up outside, and we were looking at that, and I'm trying to get the map in my phone working, not really paying attention to our surroundings when some guy comes running up to us saying that we are "in screen" or some such nonsense.   I guess we walked right up to Alec Baldwin while they were filming 30 Rock.  So if you watch that show and see some yokel wearing an IU hat getting in the way, it's me.

We found Times Square, and ate lunch in an overpriced deli.

Then we finally found the Uptown bus.  These buses are about the only way to see New York City in one day.  We were fortunate to have great weather--they're double decker buses.

Here's a small sample of what we saw

Lots of interesting buildings.  This was one of my favs

Inside, looking up

If you're a Beatles fan..............The Dakota

 

Yoko still lives here.

 

We had dinner tonight at the Liberty House Restaurant adjacent to our marina.  I think today is the most expensive day I've ever spent boating.