A Visit to New York City

We traveled to New York City with all the commuters from Brewster, CT.  What a drag a daily commute of 2 hours or more would be!  

Once we got to Grand Central Station we immediately headed for the Empire State Building.  We were among the first to get there that day!

The view from the top was amazing!  We would recommend this as the starting point for anyone who hasn't been to NYC before.  Two of our group had been there before and thought it was still very helpful in starting a new tour.  It's a great way to get oriented about where things are.  On the ground, you're walking in tunnels and perspective or even direction is difficult--to say nothing about the crowds.  However, we found NYC friendlier than we expected.  

The dark building at the center of the picture--taken from the top of the ESB looking west--is Penn Plaza.  From the ground you never get a good perspective of a building.  

After we left the ESB, we headed for St. Patrick's Cathedral.  From the ESB it looked like it was only a few blocks.  It turned out to be quite a distance!  It was too dark in the Cathedral for good pictures.

On the way to Central Park, we visited Rockefeller Center. (Ocean Spray was handing out bottles of cranberry juice and craisins--especially interesting to us because we'd just come through the cranberry bogs and harvest in Massachusetts.)  The building pictured is the oldest structure in the Park.  We came into the park from the south and exited to the west heading for Broadway and Times Square.  On the way, we had lunch at a great little restaurant called Cafe Europa.  Most of the wait staff are immigrants.  Our waiter was from Poland.

On Broadway, we saw the current craze--the Naked Cowboy, an actor with a guitar who wears only his white briefs.  It was chilly that day but there were lines of people wanting a picture with him.

We walked through Times Square, saw Radio City Music Hall, Carnegie hall, and the NBC Studios.

At the end of the day, we raced into Grand Central, bought our tickets, and ran to catch our train.  We felt like old-hand commuters as we settled down for the long ride home.