Sep 1 - 4, 1998 Last updated: 4/20/02 9:00am CT
September 1-4, 1998 we were in New York City. We drove, two days there and two days back. Obviously, we left before 9/1 and returned after 9/4, 1-4 were the days actually in New York. I wanted to drive; we just got a new car at the time. But what really stinks about working for a living is that you are in a hurry to have a vacation. We only had a week, so we didn’t stop anywhere in between our house and NYC (other than the one overnight each way – Du Bois, PA and near Cleveland, OH on the return trip). Next time we do a driving vacation, we will plan to take longer and make driving part of the vacation and see the sites along the way (or so I say now!).
The reason for selecting New York City was to take Denise to the Lion King on Broadway for our anniversary. No, this is not the typical Disney on ice type of musical. This was a Broadway adaptation of the cartoon, but with really cool costumes. We also took in the Late Show with David Letterman. The Letterman show is one well-oiled machine. We also walked around Times Square, Central Park and went to the top of the Empire State Building.
In retrospect, it was a pretty dumb move wanting to drive to New York City. I did not want to try and park in Manhattan, so we stayed in Tarrytown and took the train in to Manhattan on days we were headed into the city (which was 3 out of the 4 days). Tarrytown is an hour by train – one way – there’s the dumb move. But on the plus side, we do learn from our mistakes as we did not drive to or rent cars in future vacations in Washington D.C. and Boston. Large cities with good transportation systems don’t require a car, and NYC has one of the best subway systems. It’s not spotless, but it runs all the time, trains arrive frequently and they go everywhere you want to go. We never felt unsafe, as there were always a billion people around. As with any large city, watch your wallet/purse, but we had no problems. We even rode the subway after 11pm on the night we went to the play. Next time in NYC, we’ll stay in Manhattan.
There aren’t a lot of pictures because we didn’t want to look too much like tourists with cameras glued to our faces. There was one day where we didn’t carry a camera because the Lion King documentation said no cameras allowed and we didn’t want to risk losing the camera.
The day of our arrival, we drove around Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow (famous for its legend). We stopped at some castle built by some rich guy in the 1800’s. I don’t remember much about this place.
The next day we went on a morning boat ride around the island of Manhattan with the Circle Line tour company. This was a 3 hour tour, with an out of work actor (I’m assuming) doing the narration. Here we see the boat, the Brooklyn Bridge and Yankee Stadium.
Here are a couple of famous buildings, the Empire State Building (top) and the Chrysler Building (bottom)
Here we see the World Trade Center. In the second picture, the Manhattan Bridge is in the foreground and the Brooklyn Bridge is behind that.
What trip to NYC is complete without a visit to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island? We ran into an old high school classmate of mine on Ellis Island. What are the odds of that happening?
You never see the Statue of Liberty from behind. Also Ellis Island.
We tried not to go nuts on the food bill, and we also wanted to eat like the locals, so we ate New York Style pizza and hot dogs, somewhere unmemorable. We also ate at some noodle place near Times Square, but again, I don’t remember the name (Ollie’s?) About the only food place I remember the name of was the Carnegie Deli. You get a huge sandwich that is impractical to eat (too much meat between the bread, couldn’t fit it in to my big mouth). Very expensive and crowded, although the quality of the food was good. We also ate one day at a cafe in Grand Central Station, and lunched one day at a cafe in Tarrytown.