Hope you brought your walking shoes

Early morning above NYC.

Me partially blocking the view from the Empire State Building.

We woke up early on Monday morning to get to the Empire State Building before the notorious line ups. We were lucky… It took about 10 minutes to get from the entrance to the top without any line. I can’t imagine how long it would take in the middle of the day. We had a good overview of the city from the top and it wasn’t too crowded. A NYPD helicopter did a low sweep of the viewing deck which was pretty neat. I also noticed there were far fewer cars on the street than I would have thought, despite being there during morning rush hour. Lots of taxis and buses though.

Excitement at the Empire State Building.

After that, we had breakfast at a mediocre diner before meeting up with Christina’s friend Peter. Peter is extremely knowledgeable about New York and might just be the leading expert on the history of the New York subway system. Needless to say, he gave us a very informative tour.

We started off at the World Trade Center site. He took us through St. Paul’s Chapel across the street from the site. It is the oldest building in continuous use in New York and a place that people took refuge in in the aftermath of 9/11. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting much, but being there and seeing all the cards and police badges and other memorabilia was very moving. You can see the impact of 9/11 all over the city. One prime example is the New York Stock Exchange, where we went next. You can’t get a car near the building and you need to pass through a metal detector before entering the building. Interestingly, there is a building across the street from the NYSE that has pockmarks in the walls from an attempted drive-up bombing a long time ago (I believe Peter said it was a carriage, not even a car).

St. Paul's Chapel, across the street from the World Trade Center site.

 From Wall St., we went to the South St. Seaport, which is unfortunately like so many other historical tourist districts. It reminded me of Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. But there’s a deck with a nice view and it was a good place for a short break.

Our next stop was the Lower East Side, where we’d spent a bit of time the night before. We walked through SoHo and the NYU campus. I’ve looked at grad programs at NYU a bit, but housing is obscenely expensive. Peter told us a bit about the history of the tenement housing that is common in the area. It’s interesting how areas that used to be crowded, low-income, working immigrant neighbourhoods are now super expensive and trendy. Also, full of high-end stores that try to look exclusive, but that we have in Toronto. Okay, maybe I’m just saying that because I did no shopping whatsoever in New York and I’m trying to console myself.

Entertainer in Washington Square.

 We stopped by Washington Square Park near NYU, a great place for people watching. The square was full of all kinds of people doing all kinds of things. It’s always nice to see well-used, well-loved public spaces. We continued on through to Greenwich Village, where we stopped at Magnolia Bakery for delicious cupcakes. And then on to the historical White Horse Tavern, once frequented by people like Dylan Thomas, Bob Dylan, Jane Jacobs and Jack Kerouac.

Washington Square Park.

 We then walked to the Meatpacking District where we ended our lovely tour.

Note: These posts are from August, but I gave up posting for a bit because I was playing around with Wordpress. I decided to stay on Blogger for now because importing to Wordpress changes a lot of my formatting.