MORE NEW YORK CITY EXPERIENCES

May 26, 2006

The next morning we got up early and took our bikes down and headed over to the nice park and bike path that goes all around Manhattan.  We rode along the waterfront park on the west side of Manhattan from 79^th all the way south to Battery Park and then back up the east side to the Brooklyn Bridge.  It is fleet week in NYC, so the streets are full of sailors looking for fun and the harbor is full of ships.   Don, still very enthusiastic and energized by the NYC atmosphere, decided to play NYC bike messenger and so we got off the nice bike path and rode our bikes into Wall Street to get our photo with the Golden Bull.

After our bike ride we caught the tour bus again to see the downtown loop during the day.  Using our hop on, hop off privileges, we got off to visit the World Trade Center site, South Street Seaport and back to Wall Street.

In the afternoon we took the ferry out to the Statue of Liberty.  We were too late for the last ferry to Ellis Island, so we returned to take our ride to the top of the Empire State Building before heading back to the apartment. 

We had planned to take in a show or do the Night Tour and go over the bridge into Brooklyn, but we just didn’t have the time.  We have decided we need to come back to NYC for a week or two, to visit all of the museums, art galleries, and places we had to just pass by during our short visit here.

Saturday morning we went out early and did a wonderful ride around Central Park.  Since we had to stop every 200 feet for a photo we did the loop a second time just for the exercise.

Then it was time to go back to the apartment, shower, pack up and head out of town.  All went well and we were out of the apartment by the 11am deadline.  We went around the corner to our car, only to find someone had pulled into the spot ahead of us and now our space was so tight we couldn’t get out with the bikes mounted on the back.  After several tries and some tricky maneuvers with the bike rack, Don got the car out.  One fellow even stopped to help us, double parking his car just behind us and blocking traffic, because he wanted our primo parking spot.