Our RV Adventures

On our Saturday, December 7th, in New York, we spent the day riding buses. Gray Line buses like this one.

Thursday afternoon when first visited Times Square, we purchased a pair of 24 hour Gray Line bus passes from one of the many vendors on every corner.

They listed four Hop-On Hop-Off tour routes: Uptown, Downtown, Brooklyn, and a Night Tour. They also offered a Boat Tour, but since we had already visited Ellis Island  and the Statue of Liberty in 2009, and we were doing a East River/Hudson River Night Time Dinner Cruise the next day, we didn’t plan on doing it.

We planned on taking all four trips, starting with the Downtown one that first left out at 9am, with buses every 30 minutes afterwards. And luckily the starting point was diagonally across the corner from our hotel, so very convenient. So after another run at hotel’s breakfast buffet, we were on the corner at 9am for the first bus, along with a lot of other people.

We actually didn’t plan on doing any hopping-on hopping-off. We just wanted to see the city, as much of it as we could. Unfortunately, we managed to chose the coldest day of our trip . . . to ride in an open-air double-decker bus.

The Downtown Tour was a pretty good overview of the city landmarks, taking in Times Square. Empire State Building, Greenwich Village, SoHo, Little Italy, Chinatown, Financial District, Battery Park, and South Street Seaport.

In the low 30’s, plus of course the wind chill factor, I could only take a few photos before I lost feeling in my fingers, so all you get are these four.

We were kind of surprised to see Christmas trees being sold on the sidewalks, but they seem to sell everything else there, so why not?

I did get to play with the really nice zoom on my Panasonic FZ80 while we were passing the Empire State Building.

And that’s all the photos I got that day. With my gloves on I just couldn’t operate the camera.

Finishing up our first tour in about 2 hours, and ending up back in the Times Square area, Jan had been wanting some New York Clam Chowder, and Google said there was a place on the next block. But when we got there, they not longer served it. So we didn’t stay.

What we did do was to backtrack a block and have Soup, Salad, and Breadsticks at the Olive Garden we’d passed. Really good on a 35° day.

Back at the hotel we napped a little and then were back out at the bus stop for our Uptown Tour. It covered Central Park, American Museum of Natural History, Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Harlem, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Guggenheim and a lot more on the famous Museum Mile.

The Uptown Tour pretty much just segued into the Brooklyn Tour, which covered the Botanic Garden, The Brooklyn Museum of Art, Antique Furniture District, Fulton Mall, The Brooklyn Museum, Grand Army Plaza, Cadman Plaza, The Brooklyn Public Library and much more.

Back at the hotel in the late afternoon, we crashed a bit, and then had a little supper at the dinner buffet, since we’d also had lunch. Then we just goofed off for a while until our 8pm Night Tour. It included a subset of the other 3 tours, like the Empire State Building, Greenwich Village, SoHo, Chinatown, the Lower East Side, Rockefeller Center, Manhattan Bridge, Brooklyn, but at night.

Then it was back to the room, tired and happy, with Jan’s Fitbit saying we’d done over 5 miles today.

A couple of days ago there was a news story about a 75 year old Utah women found dead from natural causes in her home. But the surprising thing was that they also found her dead husband . . . in the freezer. Along with a notarized letter saying his wife didn’t kill him.

And with a little checking, the police found that he’d been dead for about 10 years, since the last time anyone saw him was the spring of 2009. Apparently she had told friends that he’d run off and left her.

Well, of course, all the commenters on Facebook and a lot of the blogs thought the wife had done him in, and the letter must a forgery. But as I told Jan, I thought it had a simpler, more benign explanation, even a loving one. Turns out the husband was being treated for a terminal illness by the VA. and had his last appointment in February 2009.

I figure the husband, knowing he was dying, and wanting his wife to be able to continue receiving his VA and SS benefits after he died, planned the whole thing, including the freezer part. The wife had received almost $180,000 in the last 10 years so it makes sense that the letter was just so his wife wouldn’t get in trouble.

I told Jan that it’s something that I would do for her if the time came, but I think she’s gonna need a bigger freezer.

Thought For The Day:

How Well Something Works Before I Try To Fix It

hjfh

Since nothing much happened today, I thought I’d jump back two weeks to our NYC trip.

Friday December 6th was our first full day in NYC after we got in yesterday morning. But before we headed out, first  we checked out the hotel breakfast buffet. And we were happy to find that this was no ‘make your own waffle’, cold cereal, and stale muffins buffet, but a full-blown one with eggs, two kinds, bacon, sausage, basmati rice, as well as baked beans. And of course, all the fruit, cereals, etc.

There were also a lot of other ‘unusual’ breakfast dishes, or at least unusual to us. We did recognize the ‘baked beans’ as being an English breakfast dish, since we saw it on the menus in London. But we don’t know who was eating rice, at least for breakfast.

But the most confusing one was laid out with the oatmeal. They had all the standards, fruit, brown sugar, honey, etc., but strangely never any bananas. What they did have that was different was ‘peanut butter’. Not sure who normally eats that way, but since I really like peanut butter, I might try it sometime.

Leaving the hotel, we Ubered over to the first place Jan want see, and that was Rockefeller Center.

Our driver let us off pretty much right in front of the big tree, which even in the daytime is pretty impressive.

Walking over to the side we looked down on the famous ice rink.

I guess I was expecting something a little more grand, but it’s not nearly as big as the indoor rink where Landon plays hockey up in Sugarland.

Noticing a Lego store right next to the rink I took a look inside. Landon’s a big Lego fan so I thought I might find something for him for Christmas. But the only thing that really caught my eye was this Millennium Falcon.

At least until I saw this price.

I mean I love the kid and all, but I wouldn’t buy that for me, much less someone else.

Sorry, Landon.

Jan also wanted to look in the window to the Today Show set,

but unfortunately they were just doing camera setup shots, so Jan didn’t get to see her favorite, Hoda Kotb.

Exploring further, we walked around the corner and found the entrance to the Tonight Show,

and, although I didn’t get a photo, we also saw the Saturday Night Live entrance.

I enjoyed seeing all the many Art Deco ornamentations inset into the Rockefeller Center buildings.

Reminds me a lot of the decorations on the Empire State Building.

Finally, after several hours we headed back toward our hotel. But this time we just walked. I had noticed on Google Maps that we were actually only 5 or 6 blocks from our hotel. It took longer for our Uber because of the one-way streets. I think we were able to walk it quicker than we Ubered.

And cheaper, too.

We checked out a few gift shops as we walked back, and then took a nap in our room for a while.

Then about 6:30 we went back downstairs to have dinner at the hotel buffet. And once again ran in to the international cuisine offerings. Among other items we had our choice between Lamb Ragout and Fried Calamari. Not on of our Favorites List.

We finally settled on hamburgers. Pretty good, actually.

Then we walked back over to the Rockefeller Center to check out the tree at night.

Really beautiful!

And of course, a lot of other Christmas on every corner.

Then it was back to the hotel to rest up, so we could do it all over again tomorrow.

Thought For The Day:

“The further a society drifts from the truth the more they will hate those who speak it.” George Orwell

ghdtgh