8/1/13 - NYC Orientation Tour Day 2

Still flushed with the enthusiasm of showing Jenny and Richard ‘our NYC’ since we had arrived here a whole week before them….we set out today to cover the rest of the orientation tour. Walked across to Central Park (that’s eight blocks which is a good stretch of the legs for four people cramped in a one bedroom flat) to catch the bus outside the Guggenheim Museum. The winter landscape in the park is striking and I’m looking forward to taking the same shots in the spring and early summer to see the transformation that a little heat will bring to this special place.

 The uptown loop takes in the Columbus Circle and the Time Warner Centre, the Trump Tower (well one of five he now has in the city), the Lincoln Centre, the Dakota Apartments and Strawberry Fields, the American Museum of Natural History, the Upper West Side (which was the coolest place to live before Brooklyn took off), the Cathedral of St John the Divine, Riverside Church (now we were in the church capital of NYC - they were everywhere), Grant’s Tomb, then on to Harlem to see the Apollo Theatre (where greats such as Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, James Brown, Diana Ross & The Supremes, Gladys Knight & the Pips, The Jackson 5, Patti LaBelle, Marvin Gaye, Luther Vandross, Stevie Wonder and Aretha Franklin first performed at amateur night), the Mosque where Malcolm X used to pray and hold meetings, the Central Park Conservatory Gardens, the  Museum of the City of New York, El Museo del Barrio, the Smithsonian Museum of Design, the Jewish Museum, the Guggenheim, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Frick Collection , the Whitney Museum, the Central Park Zoo, the Apple Store and the Plaza (which is now apartments rather than the magnificent and romantic hotel from ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s). 

 We regained our strength over lunch at Angelo’s Diner behind the Plaza before catching the next bus for the tour of Brooklyn. As soon as we crossed the Brooklyn Bridge (the sun setting behind it made for some sensational photos) we loved the edginess of this place and we could see why Cameron who had been for the most part asleep during the day and out all night was often in the clubs and dive bars in this district.


           We took in the Cadman Plaza, Brooklyn Heights, the Promenade, the old Fulton Landing, the Atlantic Avenue middle-eastern restaurant and antique furniture district, Grand Army Plaza, the Brooklyn Public Library, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, Flatbush and Fulton Mall. Also saw Jay Z’s new concert venue and home stadium for his basketball team the ‘Brooklyn Nets’.  Peter successfully negotiated with the bus driver to let us out on the Brooklyn side of the bridge so that we could walk back across it and take some photos of Manhattan from the bridge. As we strolled across it and dodged the crazy bike riders travelling towards us on the narrow passageway, we agreed that we were keen to check out Brooklyn by night when the people who live here come out to play.

But we weren’t finished yet, so we grabbed a cab to Broadway and took our front row seats for ‘Jersey Boys’. The show was sensational with great singing and dancing by the cast (and they could act) and we found ourselves humming the seemingly endless number of hits Frankie Valli had in his day all the way home.