NYC, Take two

We are continuing our attempt to enjoy our southward journey and have been exploring New York City more this last week. Of course, we still have to make sure the kids are doing their schoolwork.

The first day saw us kicking around the boat as the hurricane passed the east coast. It was a weekend, so we had a nice breakfast and then kept ourselves busy. The younger kids and I did some painting and Owen had us rolling with laughter doing his usual antics.

The next day was Sunday and we took the Long Island Railroad (LIRR) into the city. This is a super convenient way to see New York City on a budget! We get to stay in a picturesque, quiet setting but can take a comfortable train into New York City to see all the sites. It was an hour long travel time in total, including the subway ride uptown, but the LIRR is quiet, clean and comfortable. We decided to see the Metropolitan Museum of Art on our first day. This is a huge museum! We started with the Anciet Egyptian art and there were so many statues, sarcophagi, pieces of jewellry, temples and pieces of pottery that we took forever to go through the area. They have a very cool room with floor to ceiling windows that houses a fully rebuilt temple. It was moved from the edge of the Nile to the museum when a dam was built further up river causing it to be flooded every year. After people from the US and UNESCO recovered it, it was gifted to the museum. They have built a pond or moat around the temple to really create a neat atmosphere in the room. After a bite to eat in the cafe we continued on with the Arms and Armour section. The kids liked seeing the old weapons including the samurai swords and flintlock rifles with intricately decorated parts. We followed this up with a tour of the Ancient Greek and Roman area. I am always impressed with the marble statues of humans and hope that we make it to Italy at a later date so I can show the kids Michelangelo’s David statue. I was so impressed with it when I saw it at just 11 years old. TheMET does have a large impressive statue of ‘Perseus with the Head of Medusa’.

After hours of wandering the museum, with the little kids starting to drag their feet from exhaustion, we went to a playground in Central Park. Suddenly, Simon and Norah had bounds of energy again! The rest of us rested our feet before we headed out again. We walked to across Central Park, taking in the city vista and hundreds of New Yorkers enjoying the various aspects of the park. On the other side we found an ice cream shop to stop at before heading back to the subway and the LIRR. It was a long day. On our way back to the Port Washington, on the LIRR, we ordered pizza to pick up and take back to the boat. It was well after 8pm by the time we got back to the boat, but we were happy to sample typical New York style pizza in our own home after a full day of site-seeing.

We spend a few days after that doing schoolwork and short trips to shore for groceries, walks, runs and playground visits. Kevin and I are slowly building up our running stamina again after months with much less activity than we are use to. However, as fall starts to seep in, I must say, we have all said we are ready to start heading farther south to warmer weather again. There have even been a few days when we had to wear pants again! Kevin and I will just have to slowly build up our resilience to running in warmer climates as we go.

Our second trip into the city was on Thursday. We took the LIRR again, this time heading to Penn Station first. Last time, the LIRR took us through Grand Central Station first. It’s so impressive how many people they can move through that station. They have so many different trains and subways coming and going and there are many old and new platforms that blend their styles together. Penn station was very similar, minus the impressive main concord. From Penn station we took the subway to Brooklyn where the New York Transit Museum is. On a previous trip to London, Kevin and I, along with much younger Owen and Halyna, went to the transit museum there. We were so impressed and were hoping that this would be an equally good experience, and I would say for the most part it was. We find these museums are particuarly interesting because they have old turnstiles and train cars on display for you to wander through. It was also really neat to see how they dug the tunnels and created to subway in the first place, especially since it was 100 years ago!

What was also interesting about this trip was our chance to see Brooklyn. It was surprising to us how different it was from New York. There definitely is a different feel wandering around Brooklyn. We walked along a large boulevard crowded with people, as well as past rows of brownstones and niche restaurants under the Brooklyn Bridge. Our final destination being, of course, the Brooklyn Street Bridge. Having travelled under it, we figured we should travel over it as well. We joined the throngs of people walking over to the south end of Manhattan. Personally, I think the tourist souvenier tables and photo ops took away a lot from the experience. Furthermore, we saw too many people putting themselves in precarious position for the perfect photo op.

Once we got to the other side we walked down to the South Street Seaport to look out over the water. Luckily we had just enough time to visit an old cargo boat they have as part of the Seaport Museum. It was used in the 1800’s and refurbished to be put on display in the late 1900’s. The kids have seemed to have develped an appreciation for old boats since we have been living on a boat of own. Seeing how people had to live on boats in the past makes our boat truly look like luxury.

We made our way back to Port Washington after that, stopping this time for Chinese take-out on the way home. It was another full day in the city. We have one more day that we plan to spend in New York before we leave Port Washington next week. However, first we have to get through the storm that is blowing in this weekend. A storm front has developed around Virgina and is moving up the east coast before it slowly dissipates around Long Island. We are expecting wind and lots of rain for up to four days. So, we spent Friday effectively ‘battening down the hatches’ and stocking up on food, to avoid a wet dinghy ride to town. We even moved our boat a little closer to land so that we had more protection from the winds. We can see that other boats in the harbor are making similar preparations. We fit in another walk and run around town as well. After so much walking lately, we will probably be ready for a few down days.