Day 4 Sunday 15th July 2012
Good start with a nice healthy brekky on the run, the fruit here is from California and is delicious! The berries are huge and so cheap, there are vendors selling all manner of things on the side walks, hot dogs, kebabs, drinks, t-shirts, to name just a few.
We headed off to the Hop on Hop off bus to do the Up town tour which would take us to places like Harlem the Bronx, but the opportunity to go for a Sunday morning walk through the Memorial Gardens for John Lennon won us over. So we had a lovely wander through Strawberry Fields which is in Central Park, just over the road from where John was murdered. His wife Yoko still lives there, she owns 3 apartments on one level. The gardens are very beautiful and so peaceful.
We decided to continue our walk and came across a squillion joggers and walkers all taking advantage of a warm Sunday morning. We walked and walked and walked some more to find the museum that was part of our package, alas we went to the wrong one, not like us to get stuff wrong! The young girl told us where to head, it was just a short way up the road, glad it wasn’t a long way, cos we would still be walking at tea time. So eventually we found the correct museum, had a look through and headed off to rejoi.n the ho ho bus to Carnegie Hall and to the shops to get a t-shirt to cover my shoulders, it was very hot in the sun. On to Battery Point to try to get over to Governors Island, as it appealed to us, however the queue stretched for kilometres, so we did as one does, and went to the New York City beer garden.
On to the subway to Penn Station intending to go to Pier 38, but got sidetracked at Lucys roof top bar near Madison Square Gardens for a pleasant time people watching and listening to 33000 cabbies honk their flipping horns. I had a really lovely mojito and thought of the times shared with Shazza doing the same.
I am laughing as I write this up, as it still sounds like all we did was go on a massive pub crawl, but we walked in between pubs……… so, we happened upon a place called the beer academy, only reason we went there was cos they advertised the had 100 beers on tap and 50 bottles surely there would be a VB there, sadly for Warren this was not the case. Onward we go in the quest to find him a VB in New York City. It’s a tough job, but alas a job that must be done.
We found the ho ho bus again and continued our up town tour through Harlem with a local lady who was from Harlem and was just delightful to listen to her. She too was very passionate about her city, and the community.
Along the way we saw some amazing stuff, a church built by the Rockefeller children for their parents, cool $50 and extraordinary to say the least. The architecture of the buildings in this city blows you away, given their age.
11.30 pm saw us arrive home after leaving at about 7.30 am, we were a bit weary, had a bite to eat (New Yorks famous pizza, we do them way better in our country !
Another fabulous day was had in the Big Apple.