New York City - Part 2

On to Battery Park

From there we walked along Wall Street (past the sad three Occupy protesters and tons of tourists), by the Bull at Bowling Green and over to Battery Park.  I was beginning to feel a little peckish, so we stopped for pretzels and cokes at a street vendor. 

There were two lines to get on the ferry: one for those who bought tickets online ahead of time and one for the poor saps that waited until they got to the park to buy tickets.  At 12:30 we walked through the gate and were quickly merged through security with people who had been waiting over two hours in line. 

Tracy’s Tip: Buy your tickets to Liberty/Ellis Island in advance!

Lady Liberty

 I still can’t believe I’ve stood at the base of the Statue of Liberty.  It was everything I anticipated it would be and more.  It definitely helped that we had the most PERFECT weather.  The sky was clear blue, there was a nice breeze, and the sun was shining.  I took a ton of pictures just trying to show the how impressive the statue is.  I’m not sure I can adequately sum up the experience.  You’ll just have to go visit yourself!

9/11

After making it back to shore, we started walking north in the direction of our next subway stop.  We had planned it so that we could walk past Ground Zero.  You have to really plan in advance to see Ground Zero so that they can do a background check, but we had opted not to do that.  There was a lot of construction going on and tons of people wandering around just like us.  Even though there were huge construction barriers that blocked the view of the memorial, there was a very solemn atmosphere around the place.  It was hard to believe that such a monumental event happened 11 years ago.

Times Square

We rode the subway back to Times Square.  I’m going to go ahead and say it…Times Square was the only part of NYC that I really didn’t care for.  It was just WAY too crowded.  I was legitimately concerned that Laura and I were going to be separated.  We stayed long enough to take some pictures and figure out which street our musical was going to be on then we headed out.

Central Park

We walked past lots of famous places – Rockefeller Plaza, FAO Schwartz, Trump Tower (How many buildings does that guy own?) – on our way to the Park.  By the time we got there I was exhausted.  Laura bought a coke and I got an ice cream cone and we found a bench to sit on by the pond.  Again, it was the most beautiful day ever and I could have stayed there for hours, but we had places to go!

Tracy’s Tip: If you want to experience all that Central Park has to offer, plan on spending one (or maybe two) days there.

Dinner in Hell’s Kitchen

In planning out the day, we looked for somewhere close (but not too close) to Times Square for dinner.  We hoped to find a reasonably priced place since we wanted to save money for things like musical tickets.  We did a little internet hunting, randomly picked two places with interesting names, and went with our gut.  Vynl’s was the perfect pick.  It was a small restaurant with clean restrooms, a fantastic waiter, and an entire jug of water waiting for us on the table.  We both loved our meals.  In fact, I’d go back just to have another chicken parmesan sandwich.  I’d highly recommend it to anyone looking for a reasonably priced place to eat in that part of town.