New York City

Oct 2 – We just got back from a long day of touring New York City. We bought two-day bus packages that took us all over Up and Downtown New York including Brooklyn and Harlem. We even visited the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. We did two day trips and one night trip: so we could see the lights. There is a huge difference between day and night. The streets are busy during the day but at night they come completely alive. There must be twice as many people. I included a couple of photos for your viewing enjoyment.

We primarily ate at little diners and street corners while in the city. It part of the local life style. We’ve had gyros, hot dogs, Philly cheese steaks and a few other things. We had an interesting thing happen tonight at dinner. We were eating and this lady came in ranting about wanting some food. She threw a dollar at one of the servers and he told her she’d have to wait her turn. She got angry and started to go behind the serving area. One of the guys stopped her. She then turned and grabbed some food off a ladies plate and threw it at the server. Then he came around the corner to show her the door and she hit him. He was about to hit her back when another patron stepped up and said “Now don’t you be hitting a woman.” That was an issue I think most people would not have considered. She was not acting like a lady. Some of the people eating moved away in case things got ugly. We watched in amazement as things slowly settled down and the lady left. So, for the price of dinner got also got a free show; New York style. Can’t beat that!

After dinner we went on the night bus tour. Time Square was full of people. There were thousands of them. While riding the bus a funny thing happened to Val. All of a sudden she felt something wet on her face. It wasn’t raining so can you guess what happened? Here we are, 8:00 at night riding on an open top double decker bus enjoying the ride. What could it have been? It was bird poop. Yup, some bird must have taken aim and WHAM. It hit her on the forehead, splashed on the inside of her glasses, dribbled down her cheek and stopped on the lapel of her jacket. She was so surprised. When we stopped laughing we were able to give he a Kleenex to wipe it all off.

All in all we enjoyed our trip to the Big Apple. We all agreed that there is no way we could live there but it was an interesting couple of days and we are all glad we did it.

One photo is of the Statue of Liberty with Manhattan in the background. Another picture is of Time Square at night and the third photo is of an exhibit they had at Ellis Island. It was comprised of prism like surfaces that from one angle you say a face of one of the immigrants that passed through and on the other surface was the American flag. In the photo you can see a little of both.

Tomorrow we go a little further south.