Day out in NYC

Saturday was a big day. Liz had plans to go upstate to her friend Tiff's house and go kayaking and have dinner and stuff like that. I decided that morning that I would go in to New York City for the day and walk around and see some places I hadn't seen before.

Living in Stamford is good for the train, as it means that we can get express inbound trains to NYC. The train pulled out of the station at 11:10 and arrived at Grand Central at 11:45. 35 minutes is nothing when the train from Greenwich or Port Chester used to take around an hour. From Grand Central (which is at 42 St) I walked to Central Park, which starts at around 60 St. I ate my lunch in the park and then wandered, seeing the Mall (which I hadn't seen before), before heading up to Belvedere Castle, which to get to I ended up level with 82 St. After I checked out the castle (it's not so much a castle as it is a single tower) I walked back downtown, walking to the Flatiron Building via Times Square. The Flatiron building is at 23 St (if I remember right). That walk also took me by the Empire State Building and Rockefeller.

From the Flatiron District I didn't want to walk to the Manhattan Bridge, but I wanted to see it. The Manhattan Bridge is one of the 2 major bridges feeding traffic into Manhattan from Brooklyn (the other being the Brooklyn Bridge). The Manhattan Bridge is often seen in movies as the double decker bridge, while the Brooklyn Bridge is the older looking stone bridge. Anyway, I took the subway downtown a bit, then walked a few blocks through one of the asian neighborhoods to the bridge entrance, passing many fish markets, the Fung Wah bus ticket office and people pushing things towards me saying "You want DVD". The bridge entrance is cool, which is why I wanted to go there.

From the Manhattan Bridge (above) I walked cross town a bit to the Brooklyn Bridge (below). I hadn't been this close to the Brooklyn Bridge before, and decided since I was there I would walk part way across it. If I knew for sure where subway stations were on the Brooklyn side I would have walked all the way. I walked about halfway, at which point I could see across the river to Liberty Island and also see most of Manhattan. I then caught the subway back to Grand Central and decided to call it a day because I was getting hungry and was really hanging out for the sausages we had at home. So I jumped on an express train which took 40 minutes or so and arrived back in Stamford at 8:20.

I went to the bus station to find out when the next bus would be; it wasn't going to be for another 35 minutes. The bus wasn't going right to our apartment, but along a main road nearby, so I decided to start walking the way the bus would go. The bus passed me at the very street I would have had to have gotten off at, so I ended up walking home from the train station (3.2 miles).

I worked out later, thanks to Google Maps, that I walked a little over 12 miles all day (which is 19km or so, the equivalent of walking from Belmont to Newcastle along the Pacific Highway). The walking had left me really hungry, and those sausages tasted awesome.

Sunday was a bit more subdued as far as exercise went. We ended up going to the beach and grilling for dinner, where we saw a family of raccoons feasting on the delights that they found in the garbage.

The photos in this post may not be ground-breaking, but they were part of the reason I went to NYC. I didn't expect to get really awesome shots (which I didn't), but I did want to start getting used to the present that Liz and I bought ourselves a week or so ago. We got ourselves a new camera, a Nikon D90, and so far I'm pretty impressed. I think the results from it will be better once I am used to it a bit more, but it's all positive so far.