Monday July 31 – Boston to New York City

Our bags were collected at 8.30am, but we didn’t need to be ready until 9.45am so we went for a walk after breakfast, and bought some food to have on the train. Boston is a nice city, and we enjoyed our walk. Lesley woke with a sore throat that disappeared mid-morning. Here’s hoping….

the little sidewalk restaurants first thing in the morning

wide park as a medium strip between the two sides of the road

celebrating women

living stump - left there to absorb water down into the ground to feed the roots of trees on either side

The train was Amtrak, the journey about 3½ hrs. It was interesting watching the scenery go by.

part of our group waiting

sign of the times

mini Sydney Harbour Bridge - the rail bridge we went over - approaching New York

outskirts of New York

 We arrived at Penn Station just before 3pm. New York is an insanely busy city. Most of us were a bit shell-shocked even by the bus trip to the hotel. Can’t imagine living and driving in the city. Cars everywhere and while there probably are road rules they don’t seem to be obeyed. Vehicles of all sizes enter blocked intersections and then stay there once lights changed; pedestrians have to watch out because vehicles run red lights, and have to walk around/between vehicles which are stuck on crossings; horns beep constantly; cyclists without lights or helmets (or common sense) ride anywhere and how they don’t get skittled we’ll never know.

parking options include this double-decker arrangement - not sure how the top car gets to the ground!

Our hotel is the Renaissance (pronounced Ren-i-sonce, unlike the way we pronounce it), and it is right on Times Square. We had an end room – the end wall beyond our room was full of huge LED screens advertising all sorts of things facing Times Square downtown.

the tall wall of screens is the end wall of our hotel. Our room is approximately level with the Coca Cola sign, on the left

Times Square actually isn’t a square – more like some mall space between roads that intersect(actually Broadway intersecting 7th Ave diagonally northwest to southeast), and all the buildings around have huge LED screen which advertise movies and products. So very brightly coloured, and constantly flashing all around as images change on screens.

New York (well, Manhattan, which is the city centre, approx 22 kms long) is set out in a grid pattern, except for Broadway which intercepts the grid diagonally. The streets in the original part of the city have actual names (generally for the location, or after someone). The rest is divided with avenues running north-south, spaced half a mile apart, and streets spaced five per half mile.  All are numbered, with 5^th Ave as the spine of Manhattan – all streets to the west are named so e.g. West 45^th; and all streets to the east are named so e.g. East 37^th. It makes so much sense after being there and seeing it. We read murder mysteries by American writers – many are set in New York, so it felt amazing to actually visit areas that are mentioned in the books.

Gary got us hop-on-hop-off bus tickets, so after we’d been to the room to drop our stuff we ventured out! My word – what a shock. Our cities are nothing compared to New York, in terms of noise and busy-ness, and numbers of high-rise buildings soaring into the sky. We wandered around Times Square taking it all in but is was very crowded. 

There is a grandstand just across the road in front of our hotel, where people can sit and just take it all in!! GREAT advertising for the companies using the LED screens. Perhaps not so good for people who are prone to epileptic fits, with the constant flashing of bright lights and colours all around. Well – we’ve been here now, but we can’t see the attraction!

We turned tail and walked uptown (north) to Central Park. This is really big, and we only managed about an eighth of it. Lovely space though – the city’s lungs, so to speak. It isn’t flat, like the rest of the city, and has higher areas and lower areas, and huge rocky outcrops, lakes and streams. We found out that Central Park is completely man-made. Thousands of man-hours spent moving massive rock and tons of earth to get what they have now. It was an expensive gamble when created back in 1857 and is now famous.  

Carnegie Hall

memorial to John Lennon, who lived, and died, nearby on the street

We did notice that New York is a dirty place, despite there being cleaners around. It smelt of garbage (or trash) and urine. Not very pleasant in places. It was a hot day, so we sat for a while in the park. On the way back to the hotel we got dinner (shared again) at Brooklyn Diner. The hop-on bus had a night tour so we took that at 8pm as it was getting dark, and saw the city at night. Traffic was a lot less so less noise and jarring of constant braking, so it was a pleasant night.

Times Square at night