Walked around the mid east side of Manhattan where the United Nations is located. It was a Saturday so not a lot happening, went up to the top floor of the Beekman Hotel which has a great view over Manhattan from a different perspective. The bar wasn't opened in the middle of the day so we found a diner over the road for a bite to eat, Belgian Waffles with strawberries, maple syrup and ice cream, wonderful...
No flags flying at the UN, we found them the next day in Central Park for the NY Marathon!
Sculpture at UN
View from Beekman Hotel back over East River to Queens
The NY marathon was on Sunday Nov 6. It started on the northern tip of Staten Island, across to Long Island through Brooklyn and Queens over to the east side of Manhattan, up to the southern tip of the Bronx, back onto Manhattan around Central Park and finishing on the west side of Central Park. It was a perfect day, cool but lovely sunshine, we got a great spot about 400 mtrs from the finishing line and saw the winners come through. Most of the top finishers were Kenyan or Ethiopian, as expected. The male winner set a record of 2hrs 5 mins 6 secs, amazing.. We'd received a text that a friend from Fairhaven was running the race so we waited around for an hour and a half to see if we could pick him out, which wasn't easy, but didn't see him. In the paper it said he took a bit over 5 hours so he finished, great achievement.
The winner - Geoffery Mutai from Kenya
Notice the international flags along the roadway - from the UN?
Notice the international flags along the roadway - from the UN?
Second place
Beautiful sunsets still!
Monday is our day to go to St Paul's Chapel near the World Trade Centre at 1pm to watch the Trinity Choir and Orchestra play Bach for an hour, it's very relaxing, lovely music. On the way back to the apartment we purchased a quirky wall clock for the Fairhaven house which we packed along with summer clothes, excess shoes and books and sent home, hopefully it will all arrive safely within the next 2 weeks. We tried the local diner right across the street from the apartment for a meal, it was pretty average. The best diner so far has been the 5 Napkin Burger on 9th Ave, a stand out.
Tuesday was a beautiful day, we walked up to Bryant Park after picking up a hot chocolate and muffin from Starbucks, to watch people ice skate and play bocce. It's a great park, always something happening but also very relaxing, our favourite park. Walked around mid town 5th Ave, went into Lord & Taylor's department store which we hadn't visited before. Pretty similar to most other stores but not busy at all.
That night we got "free" tickets for an 11pm show at Birdland, a jazz venue just around the corner from the apartment, to watch Maureen McGovern (she sang "The Morning After" for the film Poseidon Adventure). We had to spend a minimum of $10 each on drinks which was fine, the show was great. Probably only 60 people there but everyone was quiet, it was very intimate. She sang a Bruce Springsteen song we'd not heard before - "If I should fall behind", beautiful lyrics.
The next couple of days were pretty lazy but we had a couple of night time outings. We went back to Birdland on Wednesday night to listen to the Louis Armstrong Centennial Band, which was a group of 5 musicians playing Louis Armstrong songs, great female trumpeter, very entertaining. On Thursday night we caught up with Paul and Karen, friends from Chelsea, for a meal at Salina's in Chelsea. Great food, great company, pleasant night so we walked the 20 streets down and back on 9th Ave.
Multi coloured Empire State Building
Empire State and NY Times building, very colourful
We decided we needed to see New Jersey at least once before we left NY so we got a ferry at the end of 39th street and took the very short ride across the Hudson River to Hoboken. It was a very windy, chilly day but we rugged up and walked the main street, Washington Street. Lots of brownstones with shops at street level, a real mix of residential and commercial. Quite a bit of activity but a much lower noise level than Manhattan. Took some great photos back towards Manhattan from the "Frank Sinatra Park": (Frank was born in Hoboken).
View from New Jersey - The building with the white and red sign on top is our apartment building
New Jersey on the left, Manhattan on the right looking north up the Hudson River
We got a PATH train back to Manhattan and went to the pictures to watch "Tower Heist" a film with Eddie Murphy, Ben Stiller and Alan Alda, filmed in NYC, very funny and better than we expected it might be.
Saturday was another windy, chilly day so we stayed indoors. Ventured out late in the day to go to another film, J. Edgar with Leonardo DiCaprio, directed by Clint Eastwood. Don't bother, boring, too long, weak story line.
The Australian Open Golf from Sydney was shown live on TV for all 4 days, given the time difference the US showed the Channel 10 coverage at 8pm covering the afternoon play. A couple of the Australian commentators were embarrassingly over the top on Tiger Woods and he did play well, but a number of Aussies played extremely well with Greg Chalmers from WA winning the tournament from another Aussie, John Senden. I doubt the Aussie Open would have got the coverage it got if The Presidents Cup, USA v The Internationals, wasn't starting next week at Royal Melbourne, another few late nights watching TV for us.
Sunday morning we headed back to Harlem to watch another gospel service. Firstly we went to a church well publicised for tourists, "Abyssinian Baptist Church" but the queue wrapped around the block so we gave it a miss and went over the road to the "Mother African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church", a bit of a mouthful. Quite a few tourists in this one as well but no queues. From the couple of services we've been to, it would appear that the regular congregation is only about 50 so no doubt they rely on the tourists to add to their income. This church was asking for $10 a head but when they pass the plate (or box in this case) around it's up to the individual. The singing was good but nothing like the "Blues Brothers" !!!!!
After the service we headed further north in Harlem to Tryon Park, high above the banks of the Hudson River, still lingering autumn colours on the trees on both sides of the Hudson. A museum, The Cloisters, is at the top of the park, wonderful outlook. Close by is The New Leaf Cafe but the wait was over an hour so we moved on.
Tryon Park, steps up to The Cloisters
View from Tryon Park across the Hudson River
Feeding time...
Re-enactment of revolutionary battle for Fort Washington
Further north at the Harlem River, which separates Manhattan from The Bronx, is Inwood and the Inwood Hill Park. Broadway runs this far north and is the main street through Inwood. We found a little cafe for lunch before walking around the park and watching a variety of sporting activities - baseball and a frisbee competition played like touch football.
We checked out a few jazz bars as we headed back home, St Nick's Pub which had closed down, Jazz @ The Shrine nothing special and 449 LA Jazz Club which was closed that day.
Window washing at the apartment!
Till next time
Pam & Terry
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