New York, New York, Part II

Going back to the NY trip I started writing about, finishing the travelblog.

Here's St. Patrick's Cathedral on the left. It just looked so old it was awesome. I don't know why I think old things (clarification: old buildings and paintings) are so cool, but I do.

Thinking about the TMBG song, I decided to go to Rockefeller Center (right). It was a beautiful morning. I decided not to go to Top of the Rock because the wait was so long and I was feeling keenly the "alone-ness" of traveling alone that day. Let's just say I didn't plan as well as I should have...there's so much I would have done differently if I'd known, but I'm still glad I had such a good time. :)

Then I went to the Library. It's on 42nd Street. Look at those columns! There are large lions guarding the library too, but it just wouldn't be fair to put a picture of one up without me sitting on his paws, and I didn't have a person there to take a photo, so...

And here is Atlas Shrugged, because I'd just finished reading the book, and was full of ideas about it. I'll not write about those ideas in this blog post. 

I got a little flustered, the city was a bit overwhelming. I just walked and walked and walked, it was like I was thinking if I stopped to actually "do" something that I would miss everything. Instead I did nothing and it feels like I missed everything, even though that is of course not at all the case. I did do a couple things, not properly...I took a pit stop in Union Station, which is too huge and confusing by half. There, I checked out the train schedules and admired the tiny windowpanes before I caught the subway to the Staten Island Ferry to see the statue of liberty, but didn't climb up or anything. (The line was hours long.)  Below is the view of a few buildings in the city from the ferry.




And here she is, Lady Liberty herself, as seen from the boat on a picture-perfect day.

 And here's a view of some buildings from the ferry (you go all the way to the southern tip of the famous Isle of Manhattan and then go southwest to get to Staten Island, which, by the way, is awfully close to New Jersey.

And another view of a lot more buildings from the ferry.

Here's St. Bartholomew's. Doesn't it look like it belongs in a French history textbook? (well, except for the American flag flying.) I love old buildings! 

Then I did all sorts of other cool (walking) things, and saw more awesome things, and felt like the Primary song, "Pioneer children sang as they walked and walked and walked and walked..." and I felt like adding, "and walked, and walked, and walked, and walked and....waaalllkkkkeed." (that last one is like the battery-powered toy winding down, sputtering.) 

Some of them are: walking on Broadway, where I saw a sign advertising a show with one of my sister's favorite actors in it (Robert Sean Leonard) and she actually went to see it about a month later...kind of funny. And here is Ripley's, and next to it (with the big metal hand) Madame Tussaud's wax museum. And I went to Times Square...and saw all the lights, so distracting. (I wrote about them earlier.) And then for some reason I felt compelled to go to the M&M factory, where I was overwhelmed by pastellation of cocoa, an army (literally) of plush stuffed toys with M's on them, and kids who had been playing tourist for way too long and wanted to go home. (Kind of like how I felt. So I did go home. But  I stopped along the way...)

I stopped, at the recommendation of a friend, at Carnegie Deli, right by Carnegie Hall, where I bought a twenty-five dollar sandwich. Yep. $25. For a Reuben. It was massive. I thought it weighed at least five pounds. (Maybe it actually weighed in at closer to two...but who cares, this thing was ginormous.) Yes, that is a sandwich. Not a misshapen pizza or anything else...it was yummy, too...though I'm not sure it was $25 worth of yum.

And then it was really early but I didn't care...I took probably one of the loveliest showers I've ever taken in my life and went to bed, because I knew that on the next day, I was going to see lovely things, and I wanted to be ready. But I'm not ready to go into what I saw in detail just now so I'll post this and let you get ready...for more New York!