A Nice Place to Visit

Last week Sherry and I spent four days in New York City. It truly is "a nice place to visit." We travelled by train from Old Saybrook, Connecticut, visiting with Terry and her family before and after the trip to NYC. It is a point of honor for me to take a vacation without renting a car. We used only public transportation in NYC and getting there from Connecticut. (Not counting Terry taking us to and from the train station in her car.)

We arrived in NYC on Monday, Aug. 24, 2009. The first thing we did was visit the Cloisters, at the northern tip of Manhattan. http://www.metmuseum.org/Works_of_Art/the_cloisters

The Cloisters is in Fort Tryon Park, a green, woodsy refuge beside the Hudson River. We later learned that the forest in Fort Tryon Park is the only remaining natural forest in Manhattan. (The trees in Central Park were planted there.) Here is a view of the Hudson River from the park, as we walked from the 190th Street subway station to the Cloisters.

Click on each image to get an enlarged, and much higher resolution, version.

Another view of the park. That's the George Washington Bridge in the background. The Hudson River is barely visible through the trees.

Here is the Cloisters building. It's not really a reconstruction. It is a building built in the 1930's from medieval European parts. (See the web site for details.)

Here is Sherry at the entrance. It was surprisingly uncrowded when we were there. I didn't have to wait very long to get this shot with no other people in the picture.

We stayed in a hotel on 42nd Street between 7th and 8th Avenues, just off Times Square. Here is the view from our 23rd floor window.

I liked the contrast between the elegant old building in the foreground and the modern skyscraper behind it. The old building is the Times Square Building, home of The New York Times from 1913 until 2007. The modern skyscraper is One Astor Plaza, at Broadway and 45th Street. 54 stories, completed in 1972. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Astor_Plaza

Here is the obligatory shot of Times Square, Broadway at 42nd Street. New York City has banned automobiles from this stretch of Broadway, turning into a pedestrian mall.

On Wednesday we took a three hour cruise around Manhattan Island. Here is the Statue of Liberty from inside the boat. It was hotter in NYC than in Tampa that day (low 90s), and we wanted to stay inside, out of the sun, with air conditioning. Unfortunately, not conducive to good photos.

Midtown Manhattan, from the East River.

The pointed building in the background is the Chrysler Building, once the tallest structure in the world. In less than a year, it was surpassed by the Empire State Building, in height but not in beauty. Still a favorite photo shot for NYC tourists. There is a much better photo on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Building