LOST IN NEW YORK
The Big Apple. The Empire City. The Five Boroughs. The City So Nice, They Named It Twice. New York, New York! We spent twelve hours in and around this amazing city. Here are the events that led up to one of the best getaways that we've had.
We took time to enjoy a two week getaway in mid-October. Our first week, we hung out with the Ispas family (minus Sam, who was still finishing a project in Phoenix) and Anthony. The week was full of beach and hot tub visits, boogie boarding, getting crushed by rogue waves, eating awesome seafood, and enjoying the sights of Myrtle Beach without the crowds. We travelled in separate cars, with Lisa, the girls, and me crammed with way too much luggage in a tiny, red Chevy something-or-other. The trunk was about the size of a footlocker, but it got great gas mileage!
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The plan was that the Kilroys would head north from Myrtle Beach for a week to visit DC, NJ, NY, and PA. After giving out hugs and saying goodby to our travel buddies, we headed out and made our way up the coast for a night in DC and a week's stay in Atlantic City. We weren't traveling to visit Atlantic City per se, buy it proved to be a good jumping off point to visit New York and Philadelphia. We thoroughly enjoyed our evening, one night, and fleeting morning in DC. We wrapped up the sights, jumped in the car, fired up Google Maps, and headed to Atlantic City.
Google Maps hates me. I'm certain of this. For years, I've been an avid user of Google, Gmail, and Google Maps. We have a love hate relationship. I love navigation, especially Google Maps, and Google Maps hates me. I can qualify this statement with the following: more times than I can count, GM had led me into ghettos, back alleys and one way streets. This navigational escapade was no different.
Things were great until we were about a half mile from our resort/hotel/timeshare room right on the Boardwalk. GM directed me on a left turn going the wrong way on a one way street, followed by what looked like an immediate right hand turn. I realized the one way rule after turning, and thought "no biggie, it's a tiny block, and I'll have a turn off of it in a sec". Wrongo, homie.
This turn essentially put me on a one way, half mile winding street that was one lane wide. At this point, I didn't care about traffic laws and took my chances. No risk-it, no biscuit, as Bruce Arians likes to say. We lucked out, and there were no other cars on the road. We located the building, and got ourselves checked in.
Our room was decent, with a pretty nice view, and that's all I'll write about Atlantic City. I doubt we'll ever go back.
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6:20 AM, Halloween morning. Lisa was up and getting ready. I drug myself out of bed and did the same. The girls were up soon after us, and we started our morning routine of moving slowly. About an hour later, we were ready to head out the door. We piled in our little red not-Corvette and hit the road. The drive from Atlantic City to Jersey City was about two hours, and actually pretty pleasant. Last year in Virginia was my first real experience of leaves changing, which I loved, and this drive was full of fall colors.
We arrived at Liberty State Park in Jersey City where we were to catch our ferry tour to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. We had planned to circumvent the system by parking for $7 at the ferry terminal, ferrying to Ellis, Liberty, and then taking the other ferry to Battery Park, NY instead of back to NJ. Once we were done exploring NY, we'd Uber or Lyft back to NJ for less than the cost of NY parking or ferry for four. It worked flawlessly!
We paid our parking, found a killer spot in the nearly empty lot, and unfolded ourselves out of the car.
It was windy enough that it kept blowing my hair in my face, but fortunately I had brought my newly purchased Myrtle-Beach-Ron-Jon-patriotic ball cap to tame my locks. We made our way to will call, which was in the old Central Railroad of New Jersey Terminal, grabbed our tickets, and headed through the TSA style security checkpoint.
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Everyone passed inspection, and we eventually boarded the ferry headed to Ellis Island. As we motored closer, I was impressed with the intricacies of the architecture of the main building. Craftsmanship was different back then.
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We piled off the boat, took a quick selfie, and headed into the building. We enjoyed exploring around, reading the educational facts, and admiring the beauty of the building. It's hard to imagine that about 12 million immigrants came to the US through this tiny island. I can only imagine the chaos of up to five thousand people per day through the Registry Room. Unbelievable.
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We finished up our self guided tour, missed our ferry, and hung out for forty minutes. The next ferry arrived, we found seats, and waited patiently as we motored over to the Statue of Liberty. Once we arrived at Liberty Island we headed to the security screening area, which was a mess, fumbled through security, and headed to the statue.
After securing our bag in a locker, we headed into the base of the statue, which houses the original torch of Ms Liberty (as of this writing, she is on her third flame). Alyssa had been having some issues with her ankle, and stairs aggravate it. Great choice of places to visit, I know, but there is an elevator to the pedestal level, so no problem! We met Ranger James on the elevator ride, who filled us in on various info bits as we ascended.
5P was our stop, and we followed the rest of the elevator riders out and up the final 26 steps to the pedestal. which is the rooftop of the former Fort Hood. We exited out of the door onto the very narrow walkway, and were greeted with high winds and an astonishing view. We walked around the base, counter-clockwise because we're rebels, and took in the sights. It was pretty remarkable, and I'm sure we would have stayed longer if we could have heard anything over the wind.
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At this point, we were all looking forward to hopping the ferry to Battery Park, and finding some high quality New York food. Lucky for us, and the two hundred other people who had the same idea, the ferry is pretty big and seats a ton of people. We took some seats inside (it was windy and cold) and cruised over to The City.
Once we landed safely and followed the herd off of the boat, we made our way to a little pizza joint near Trinity Church, which just happened to have a Dunkin Donuts right across from it. Score! We partook in some freshly made pizza pie, ramped up our sugar levels at Dunkin, and walked over to the Trinity Church for some quiet time.
Trinity Church is an Episcopal church dating back to 1697. The current church structure was consecrated in 1846, and is the third building to stand at the site. The first was lost in the Great Fire of 1776, and the second was torn down in 1839 after heavy snowfall revealed structural damage. The interior of the church is going through a minor face lift, but the chapel was in pristine condition. It's been a while since I've been in an ornate church like this one. It brought back some childhood memories, which I'm still recovering from. Just kidding...
From Trinity, we walked over to the subway station, and tried our luck at taking it for a spin. We managed to get our Metro Cards, asked the extremely nice subway-worker-guy how to get to Times Square, and hopped on the train to the Fulton stop, about two minutes away. We exited the train, and my confidence was sky high! For about 15 seconds.
When we stepped off, I thought I was looking for the "8" train, which doesn't exist. A helpful fellow human saw the look of bewilderment on my face, and asked where we were going. "Times Square" I replied. He advised us to head down the stairs behind us, and hop on the "A" train. 42nd Street would put us within a few blocks of the Square.
So, here's the thing about the subway: approximately 100% of the trains run in two directions. If you are planning on heading "uptown" from the Fulton station and you get on the "downtown" train, you're going the wrong way. And, not only are you going the wrong way, but you're traveling to Queens by way of Brooklyn. Now, I love people, and I love exploring new areas, but I could have done without this detour.
I honestly had no idea at what speed the train travels, or how long it should have taken to get to 42nd Street, but when we emerged from the tunnel, and were now on an elevated track, I knew I had screwed up. A very kind lady asked Lisa if we were heading to the airport. Obviously, since we didn't have our fourteen travel bags, we were not. She smiled kindly, advised us to get off at the next stop, walk to the adjacent platform, and get on the A train "uptown".
It was at this point, while checking Google Maps for how far off course we were, that I learned about the vehicle attack on West St, just north of the World Trade Center Memorial. This had just happened while we were on the subway. While we were nowhere near the danger, our eventual travels later in the evening took us within a couple of blocks. Initial reports (within about 20 minutes of the attack) were describing it as a shooting, which it was not. I kept this info to myself, and we waited for our train. About ten minutes later, we were headed in the right direction.
An entertaining ride (I love people watching) brought us to 42nd Street, where we made a safe exit. The streets were packed with cars, and the sidewalks packed with people. And it was Halloween. Let the games begin!
Lisa, the girls, and I trekked towards Times Square, taking in all the lights, sounds, and smells along the way. It was a relatively short walk, and Alyssa's ankle was holding up terrifically. I really, really enjoyed this short walk. There were lights and colors everywhere. Honking, sirens, voices everywhere. I don't recall any cursing at elevated volume, but I'm sure it was there. Ahhhh, just as I had imagined!
Times Square was much smaller than I expected. It seems like any movie or TV show I have seen that showcases Times Square, it appears to be pretty spacious. It wasn't, but it was still an amazing place to stand and look at everything. Especially the people. The light boards and lighting in general were enough to keep my eyes busy for hours, but we were on a tight schedule. Lyft to the rescue!
Our Lyft driver picked us up minutes later around the corner, and took us on a 45 minute exhilarating taxi-style romp to our next destination. The drive included plenty of honking, hard acceleration, hard braking, cutting off, swerving, and more honking. And that was just from our driver.
We were dropped off a couple of blocks north of the World Trade Center Memorial, as the streets around it were closed off as the investigation was still being conducted on the attack earlier in the day. Lisa checked with a police woman who advised we were fine to walk to the memorial.
As we walked along the north tower memorial, Lauren asked if all of the names inscribed in the bronze were the names of the victims. I could only nod my head in affirmation, as my throat was swelling. About 10 seconds later I mustered a "yeah sweetie, they are".
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We noticed that there were white roses placed on some of the names. Lisa did some quick investigating and found out that the names with a rose would have had a birthday on that day. The World Trade Center Memorial staff started placing this roses to commemorate birthdays in 2013. Definitely a thoughtful act.
We took our time exploring around the memorial. When it was time to leave, we ordered up another Lyft, and had a nice, quiet, smooth ride back to the car at Liberty State Park in Jersey City. At the northeast area of the park is the Empty Sky: New Jersey September 11th Memorial. Etched in the two stainless steel monuments are the names of the 746 victims of the attack of the Twin Towers. It was absolutely breathtaking at night, and was definitely one of the highlights for me.
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I snapped a few more pics of the Manhattan skyline and the Terminal and headed back to the car. Our time exploring totaled about 12 hours, but it was some of our best hours exploring together. We'll definitely be back to New York in the future to have another slice of pie and see more sights. I hope they'll be ready for us!
