NEW YORK DAYS TWO and THREE

O.K, so Day Two....

Once again Jeff and I headed out on our own adventure, this time with the goal to see all of lower Manhattan from a different view (from the Hudson River). We took a subway up to the Circle Line cruise port and jumped on. It was cloudy when we began our day, so the heat from the sun that suddenly appeared was pretty incredible (and we both ended up with sunburns and learned our lesson about wearing sunscreen no matter what it looked liked in the morning). The cruise was awesome! Our announcer/tour guide on the boat sounded just like Paul Harvey, and had quite a sense of humor. We learned alot about Manhattan history and saw all the skylines including the Chelsea area, Greenwich Village, South Manhattan (aka Gotham City) where Ground Zero is, the Financial District, the Lower East side, Brooklyn, Long Island, and Queens. We also traveled under the Brooklyn Bridge, the Manhattan Bridge, and the Williams burg Bridge.

The highlight, of course, was floating past the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.

We were hungry and thirsty after our cruise, so we just started walking to the center of Manhattan. We ended up in what we later found out was "Hell's Kitchen" area, and full of open front restaurants, delis and cafes to choose from. We picked Dalton's Irish Pub which turned out to be a great place with home brewed beverages and coney island hot-dogs with all the fixings. Sean met us there to walk back to Corey's.

We walked through Times Square again. The photo below was actually taken on our way to the boat dock in the morning. When we walked back through with Sean later in the day it was swarmed by crowds of people! Amazing! This was the one area of town that I noticed the "locals" really tried to avoid (especially while trying to get somewhere in a cab). It was crazy-busy! We also walked past Rockefeller Center and stopped in for a coffee at Starbucks (yes, it is as big on the East coast as it is on the West coast). The church across the street was amazing (St. Patrick's Cathedral). We also walked past the Empire State Building before finally catching a subway for the final few blocks to Corey and Susan's place.

We headed out on foot (we walked so much on this trip....good thing because we ate a lot of food) to Devi, an extremely fancy Indian restaurant where we had the Chef's Tasting menu, a seven course dinner followed by a sampling of several desserts. It was quite a treat, and nothing like we had ever experienced. I even ate four courses of seafood dishes including seared scallops, halibut and shrimp (and I loved it)! FYI, I am NOT a seafood person. Hats off to the chefs! Afterwards we took a cab to the East Village to karaoke in a place called Sing Sing. You can rent private rooms to sing in (with a button to order from the bar), equipped with hundreds of songs, books, and couches to lounge on. What fun!

Day Three

With Corey and Susan both having the day off it was the perfect day to tour the financial district and Wall Street (where Corey works). Corey kept asking me what was on my list of things to do/see in NYC and one of them was to eat the best NY pizza! He took us to Gruppos between 12th and 11th. It was the most amazing pizza I have ever had...thin crust, fresh ingredients. Yummmm~~~ Of course Jeff has gained a new spark of interest in pizza since leaving NY, and he has made two batches of homemade dough and sauce and been cooking pizza like crazy around here lately. We had an awesome buttermilk dough pizza tonight! I'm quite impressed (and hoping he keeps up the hobby).

Wall Street area was amazing! The streets are so small that cars no longer drive on them. The enormous buildings are butted up right next to each other. The New York Stock Exchange building was ready to get its picture taken (from the front and the back ), and the bull....The Stock Market Bull was mysteriously left in front of Wall Street years ago in the middle of the night as a gift to NYC, and was such a hot spot for tourists that we could only get a photo at the backside of him (the front was too full of people), LOL~

Battery Park now displays the mutilated sculpture that used to stand in front of the Twin Towers along with an eternal burning flame (you can see the holes and dents all over it). The original battery still stands in the park as well.

Trinity Church (smooshed right in the middle of two skyscrapers)

The Woolworth's Building, Washington's Inaugural Building, and City Hall Park

We walked down around Ground Zero. There wasn't much to see really. The entire area is fenced off and behind tarps (see way down the road in the photo, the cranes are inside the area ready for construction). The church across the street had a nice memorial set up and I was intrigued by the old (1800's) cemetery in the courtyard.

Next we caught at cab and traveled way up to north west Manhattan to Corey and Susan's college (Columbia University) to tour their old stomping grounds. WOW...talk about a lot of history and art in one spot! I would have loved to attend a campus like this! Grant and his wife's tombs are here (in an amazing dedication hall), the courthouse was filled with sculptures like the Alma Mater and Rodin's the Thinker, and the churches surrounding the area were beautifully constructed and maintained!

We stopped off at Jake's to meet Sean before dinner that evening.

We ate at Mama Mexico in Upper Manhattan! I LOVED this place...The food was amazing, the rainbow margaritas were yummy, and they even had a mariache band. The colors in this restaurant set the mood, and I adored our seating under the skylight windows. Of all the fantastic dining experiences we had, I have to say....this was my favorite place!