New York Part 1
If I don't do this now, I'm afraid it won't get done at all. Hopefully I'll be able to keep up with the rest of vacation blogging as we go along.
Monday evening we drove from home to our hotel in Queens, New York. It's not in a super great neighborhood (not real far from JFK airport), but it's very close to the subway and was reasonably priced with Queen size beds... fitting for a hotel in Queens.
Yesterday (Tuesday) morning we got up early to go to the Statue of Liberty. We were a little bit behind our schedule due to the unexpectedly long trip from the hotel to battery park (the subway took almost an hour). So we missed our 9:00 a.m. ferry, but made the 9:30 and they still had moment tickets available.
We took the ferry over and, upon arrival, discovered that a ~40-minute guided tour of the outside was about to begin. We decided to take the tour and learned a lot about the statue that we didn't know before. Keywords: keystone, colossus, Eiffel, Philadelphia, and, my favorite, no-government-money. Then we went up inside and did what you might expect (ooh, that's big, look you can see up inside her, wow we're way up here, ooh there's New York). The weather wasn't great but we did have a nice clearing right when we were at the top of the pedestal. And, yes, the crown is closed. We told the kids our legendary tales of going to the top in our younger years (this was Edi's 3rd visit, my 5th).
After our statue time was over, we raided the gift shop and made our way back to Battery Park. We hopped the subway to Central Park where we discovered it's not so easy to find food (shoulda gone south). We wound up splitting paninis at a cafe across from Juliard.
We spent a few hours inside Central Park. The kids played in the playgrounds, we all rode the carousel, and we took a horse-drawn-carriage ride. That was actually my first time in Central Park and I enjoyed it thoroughly. We only got to see the southern few blocks of it. We had to nix our zoo trip due to time constraints.
After that, we hopped the subway again down to the Blue Note. We saw the opening set of a week-long Michele Camilo engagement. Charles Flores was playing bass and Cliff Almond was on drums. Edi and I heard Cliff with Manhattan Transfer years ago at the Monterey Jazz Fest. Let's just say the whole set was indescribably wonderful. They all played their hearts out and were excellent in every way imaginable. I thought Cliff showed up Dave Weckl a bit on Tombo in 7/4 (last night was the first time I ever heard it live.. Weckl and Anthony Jackson are on the now-20ish-year-old recording of it I have).
We were all pretty tired when we left. Came back, crashed, and now we're just about ready to go for another full (but not quite so overloaded) day on our edu-cation (Edi just coined that term seconds ago and I'm stealing it!).
Today: Empire State Building, Brooklyn Childrens Museum, Ground Zero, Federal Hall, NYSE, and Times Square. Not soo full... ;)
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Monday evening we drove from home to our hotel in Queens, New York. It's not in a super great neighborhood (not real far from JFK airport), but it's very close to the subway and was reasonably priced with Queen size beds... fitting for a hotel in Queens.
Yesterday (Tuesday) morning we got up early to go to the Statue of Liberty. We were a little bit behind our schedule due to the unexpectedly long trip from the hotel to battery park (the subway took almost an hour). So we missed our 9:00 a.m. ferry, but made the 9:30 and they still had moment tickets available.
We took the ferry over and, upon arrival, discovered that a ~40-minute guided tour of the outside was about to begin. We decided to take the tour and learned a lot about the statue that we didn't know before. Keywords: keystone, colossus, Eiffel, Philadelphia, and, my favorite, no-government-money. Then we went up inside and did what you might expect (ooh, that's big, look you can see up inside her, wow we're way up here, ooh there's New York). The weather wasn't great but we did have a nice clearing right when we were at the top of the pedestal. And, yes, the crown is closed. We told the kids our legendary tales of going to the top in our younger years (this was Edi's 3rd visit, my 5th).
After our statue time was over, we raided the gift shop and made our way back to Battery Park. We hopped the subway to Central Park where we discovered it's not so easy to find food (shoulda gone south). We wound up splitting paninis at a cafe across from Juliard.
We spent a few hours inside Central Park. The kids played in the playgrounds, we all rode the carousel, and we took a horse-drawn-carriage ride. That was actually my first time in Central Park and I enjoyed it thoroughly. We only got to see the southern few blocks of it. We had to nix our zoo trip due to time constraints.
After that, we hopped the subway again down to the Blue Note. We saw the opening set of a week-long Michele Camilo engagement. Charles Flores was playing bass and Cliff Almond was on drums. Edi and I heard Cliff with Manhattan Transfer years ago at the Monterey Jazz Fest. Let's just say the whole set was indescribably wonderful. They all played their hearts out and were excellent in every way imaginable. I thought Cliff showed up Dave Weckl a bit on Tombo in 7/4 (last night was the first time I ever heard it live.. Weckl and Anthony Jackson are on the now-20ish-year-old recording of it I have).
We were all pretty tired when we left. Came back, crashed, and now we're just about ready to go for another full (but not quite so overloaded) day on our edu-cation (Edi just coined that term seconds ago and I'm stealing it!).
Today: Empire State Building, Brooklyn Childrens Museum, Ground Zero, Federal Hall, NYSE, and Times Square. Not soo full... ;)
V-
V-