NYC - Day 7

Editor's note: This day 7 post is being put up almost a week after it went down. My attempt to blog everyday during my vacation was successful for the most part; it was very doable early in the trip when we were on Long Island because there was so much downtime (read: zero nightlife). As the trip progressed into Manhattan our downtime significantly diminished and it became harder and harder to blog in the evenings as we were starting to burn the candle at both ends and the nights became a little longer. I banged out a couple of posts in the city in a cloud of fatigue and sometimes inebriation. I intended to blog the final two days upon my return to LA but I brought back a nasty little cold. I know things are supposed to be "harder" on the east coast... but even the damn colds??!! Jesuscristo, I am still wrestling with this mf'er that I've since dubbed The Bronx Flu (since that's where I was when I picked it up). Anyhoo, on with day 7. Enjoy!

I thought we did a lot of walking in day 5, but it was nothing compared to the ground we covered today. Since it was our last full day, we wanted to get up and out as soon as possible, so we decided to forgo breakfast and head directly down to lower Manhattan, an area of the city we hadn't covered yet. The subway let us out at our destination and we decided to walk the Brooklyn Bridge first.










We only ended up walking halfway across the bridge. It was time to head back to our next destination, Ground Zero. On the way there we saw this memorial:


I was fortunate enough to visit the WTC my last trip to NYC in 1998. I was only in town for a minute, but that was the must see site for me. No Empire State, no Lady Liberty, I longed only to see the twin towers. The view from the bottom:




The view from the top:



We finally arrive at ground zero. The construction workers were oblivious to the onlookers that gathered around in silence. It's still very surreal and somber.





Whew, okay, that was chilling. Time to head uptown. We saw one more WTC memorial on Church Street our way out:



Alex was serving as our ghetto-GPS, and she instructed us to head north on Hudson St. This would take us through Tribeca back to Greenwich Village where we were on day 5. Little did we now it would feel like a 3 hour, 3 hundred mile journey. At this point we had already walked roughly 2.2 miles. Remember, we're from LA. This was, as Mike Tyson would say, Ludacrisp! Note that we had yet to eat. We wanted to dine in a cafe or restaurant. That means we had to exit the tourist areas with all the fast food dives. We wanted more local flavor. So off we go!




Finally we reach the village, we can eat!! Our first meal comes at 3:45PM local time. Total distance walked, 4 miles. Mmmmmm, sustenance.





After mowing down our grub, our ghetto-GPS instructed us to take the 2-train uptown to 96th street. We were to meet her at her place of employment, head to the grocery store, then head to her and Curtis' apartment in Riverdale (da Bronx, son) for dinner and some dranks.








I didn't get any pics of the spread that Alex and Curtis prepared because I was so hungry that I dropped my camera and immediately started shoving fish tacos down my throat.

After dinner and a margarita or NINE, Curtis, who's a shutterbug, brought out all his fancy flashes, camera lights, cameras. He wanted to snap some pics of his drunken house guests at play. Click on the pic to advance to the next.





After our impromptu photo shoot, we grabbed our belongings (I grabbed this nasty ass cold) and we took a taxi back to our hotel in midtown. NYC was officially a wrap!! We can't wait to go back. Until then, IT'S-UP-TO-YOU, NEW YORK, NEEEEEEEEEEEW YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Labels: nyc, travel

posted by Bdub at 6:42 PM