Our RV Adventures

Today we were all up and down Manhattan Island, and that included TWO boat rides.

After breakfast at our hotel, we Ubered down to the 9/11 World Trade Center site, now called One World Trade Center, or the Freedom Tower.

When we were here in 2009 it was all pretty much just a big hole in the ground, only visible by looking through peepholes in a tall fence. But now it’s all finished.

The former footprints of the Twin Towers are now marked by reflecting pools,

surrounded by a border marking the names of the 3000+ people killed on 9/11.

Off to the side we could see some of the many old buildings that miraculously survived the Twin Tower’s collapse.

We had planned to do the 9/11 Museum, but found there was a two hour wait to get in, so since we had firm plans for later in the day, we decided to save it for our next visit to NYC. So our next stop was the Oculus, the entrance to the subway system underneath One World Center, combined with a shopping mall.

The building design is said to symbolize a dove with clipped wings.

And the inside is just as amazing.

We spent some time walking around inside checking out all the shops on the several levels. While we we on the lower level, we noticed the subway stop and realized we could take the subway directly to our next planned stop, the Staten Island Ferry terminal.

And rather than the $20-$30 Uber ride we had planned, we could ride the subway there for 2 $3.00 Single Ride passes. So after walking around a little more we bought our passes from the ticket machine and off we went.

It was only about 20 minutes later when we were walking into the Ferry terminal, and luckily for us, right on to the next ferry. We had already done Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty when we were here in 2009, so our plan was to ride the ferry over and back, just for the views.

Going over, we passed Ellis Island, once the nation’s busiest immigration inspection station from 1892 to 1954, processing over 12 million immigrants during that time.

Then it was on pass the Statue of Liberty, with some more great views.

And looking back toward the city, we got a couple of great shots of the New York skyline,

and the Freedom Tower.

When we got to Staten Island, we had planned to just stay on board and ride the same ferry back, but had to disembark because the crew were taking their lunch break.

But in about 45 minutes we were on our way back on another ferry.

We had next planned to Uber up to Bryant Park, near Rockefeller Center, so Jan could check out the Christmas Market that was set up in one end of the park. But noticed that taking the same subway train back in the opposite direction would drop us off just a couple of blocks from the Park. And for just 2 more $3 passes. Nice!

Jan found a number of Christmas gifts as we made the rounds, including some unique one of a kind items.

And we finally got to see snow in NYC. Tucked off over in a shady corner was this.

Finishing up, we decided to Uber back to our hotel since we had already done so much walking, almost 5 miles total, according to Jan’s Fitbit. Plus we only had a couple of hours to get dressed and down to the Chelsea Pier area for our Bateaux Holiday Lights Dinner Cruise.

We had paid extra for a window table, but looking at some of the online photos I was afraid we might be at a table with other couples, but no, we had our own table with a great view, and a beautiful lady waiting for me.

The table was elegantly set, and strewn with rose petals, which turned out to be special for us, because I had listed this as an anniversary cruise for us, which it was, but just a couple of months late.

The ship looked to be  almost completely full, with everyone having a good time.

The menu was much like our recent Viking River Cruise with several choices each for an appetizer, entrée, and a dessert.

After we ordered our meal, I saw a drink that I thought Jan might like on the menu, so I ordered us two Poinsettias.

Made with Champagne, Cointreau, and Cranberry Juice, they proved to be pretty potent. Much more so than most of the restaurant drinks we normally get around here.

Our meal was delicious and to top it off, toward the end of our meal, the hostess brought out a bouquet of red roses for Jan, also in celebration for our anniversary.

Along the way we got some great views of the NYC skyline,

And a really close-up view of the Statue of Liberty.

To make sure that everyone gets a fantastic show, the captain stations the ship as close as he’s allowed to get to the Statue, and then uses his bow and stern thrusters to just rotate in place, I think about 4 times around.

Finishing up our 3 hour cruise, yes, I know, I had expected to have a problem getting a Uber to come down into the dock area since it’s a roundabout way and there’s a fee. But an enterprising gypsy cab was waiting at the dock, looking for customers. And his fee to take us back to our hotel was less than our Uber ride there.

Tomorrow, Monday the 9th of December, will be our last full day in NYC, and we’ll be visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) and also Serendipity, a restauarant that Jan’s really looking forward to.

Stay tuned.

Thought For The Day:

“There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally, and attempting to make them equal.” – Frederich Hayek

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Well, I fixed my PC to new TV problem this morning, and we used to stream an episode of Stumptown this evening.

And as happens quite often, to paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, When you eliminate all the usual suspects, it turns out to be something weird.

First thing I did was get out my Hungarian ASUS laptop, and after booting it up, I plugged the HDMI cable into it and the other end into my desktop computer monitor. Then to get the monitor to switch over, I  unplugged the DVI cable from the computer.

And now I had laptop video on my PC monitor. So then I unplugged the cable from my monitor and plugged it into the TV.

And now I had laptop video on the TV, so now I knew that part worked. And when I then plugged the laptop cable end into my PC, suddenly I now had PC video on the TV.

WTH? So why did it suddenly start working?

While I was contemplating this mystery, and noticing that I had not plugged the DVI cable back into the monitor, I plugged it back in and the video disappeared on the TV.

WTH?

But then it made sense. Going to my computer desktop, I right-clicked and selected Screen Resolution. And there was the problem.

For some reason my Display Settings had changed. Instead to being set to Multiple Monitors and Duplicate These Displays, it was set to Show Desktop Only On 1.

And correcting the settings fixed the problem.

But what I don’t understand, and so didn’t think to check, was how the settings got changed in the first place. They were correct just a couple of weeks ago with the old TV, and I’ve had no reason to fool with them since.

So who knows, but it’s working now.

As far as streaming from the PC, we’ve been trying to catch up on some of episodes of our favorite shows we missed recording while our rig was in the shop in Luling. So first we caught up on Evil this afternoon, since we didn’t need to stream any episodes to catch up with that one.

Then this evening it was on to Stumptown to stream the one episode we needed, and then it was on to the the last two episodes we had recorded.

Then in the next few days it’s on to Prodigal Son, where we’ve got one episode to stream, Emergence, two to stream, and Bull, with two episodes, also. Hopefully we’ll be all caught up by the time the new episodes start up in a couple of weeks.

I streamed these from the computer since I haven’t had a chance to peruse the TV’s 177 page manual to see if there’s a way to stream directly from the Internet rather than through the Hulu, Netflix, AppleTV, Prime, or other services shown on the SmartHub selections.

Thought For The Day:

“Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms. […] the right of the citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government and one more safeguard against a tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible.” – Hubert H Humphrey

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