Day 17 Panama & Carribean Cruise

Day 17 New York City

This is the last full day of our great vacation; tomorrow we fly back to California.

Breakfast this morning could not have been a bigger contrast to yesterday; we stopped at a little place called Bread and Co – it was great; Sandra had a bagel with cream cheese, I had oatmeal, we both had good coffee it only cost us $6.75!

Following breakfast the four of us jumped in a cab and headed all the way down to the southern tip of Manhattan. We strolled along the waterfront taking in the great views of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, checked out the World War II Memorial (several gigantic vertical granite slabs with hundreds of names inscribed on them) and walked through the old fort. The weather was really great; it was one of those crisp bright winter mornings – we really enjoyed it.

Heading north we passed a piece of a metal statue that used to be beside one of the World Trade Center towers before 9/11. The statue was damaged and mangled so they moved it to this spot as a temporary memorial; there is also an eternal flame that burns at the site.

We headed up Broadway and encountered the Wall Street Bull; this is a gigantic brass statue of a bull that has become a popular tourist attraction. Interestingly, parked in a small pickup truck just beside the bull was a huge inflatable rat that was being used as a silent protest by some laid off construction workers. The obligatory posed photos were taken. Just a little further up Broadway, directly opposite Wall Street, is the Church of the Holy Trinity – a beautiful little old church with many graves and memorials that date to the American Revolution. In the church yard is a very moving sculpture; a large cedar tree was completely uprooted during the 9/11 attack and amazingly did not land on any structures. During the recovery they found all of the tree roots still intact and an artist coated the roots in bronze – this is the sculpture that now stands in the church yard.

A quick trip down Wall Street could not be resisted; it’s a really short street – with the New York Stock Exchange and the hall where George Washington was inaugurated featuring prominently. There was a very heavy police presence in this area.

On we moved to Ground Zero where all of the construction we saw the last time we were here is starting to pay off; the beginnings of a large tower can now be seen rising above the screens that surround the square. This is still a very emotional place.

Following our predetermined plan, we hopped in a taxi and headed for the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT). Both Sandra and Kat are very avid sewers so we had agreed to a couple of stops today that should help support their habit – this was the first of them. We arrived at the FIT only to find that the museum did not open until noon – we were 15 minutes early. What could we do to fill in the time – ah, eat!

Walking up 7th avenue we found a Chinese restaurant called the Ginger House – in we went. This being a college area of town the prices were very low – like $5.95 for a nice lunch. However as the place filled up we did not notice many students, it was mostly business folks. The Ginger House was great value and the food fine. Sufficiently nourished we headed back to the museum.

Entry to the museum was free (you can’t get any better than that) and the display consisted of a single special exhibit focused on American designers. The exhibit was quite small; I sat for most of the time watching the explanatory video while Sandra and Kat walked around the displays of dresses; I noticed much pointing, ooing and ahing – so I assume it was good. Sandra can add more here if she wants.

Walking just a few blocks further up 7th we stopped to check out the Christmas display in the windows of Macys on 34th street – very holiday-spirit kind of thing.

Another 10 minute walk took us to the fabric store to beat all fabric stores – Mood Designer Fabrics! This is the store that was made famous by the TV show “Project Runway” – it took a little bit of finding (we actually walked passed it), since it does not have any ground floor store front – it’s up on the third floor. Amazingly when we came out of the old rattling elevator and into the store I realized that a film crew was set up with cameras all over the place; they were shooting some footage for a new reality show called “The City” which will run on MTV. Off Sandra went into the warren of a store; there is so much fabric! I wandered around checking out the camera equipment. After about 10 minutes Mike, Kat and I were approached by a young girl working with the film crew who asked us to sign a waiver since we had been filmed – wow Hollywood here we come!

Well somehow Sandra only bought a couple of Mood tote bags, since we have to fly home and we are already at our weight limit. Bummer.

Even though it was only early afternoon we decided to head back to the hotel and do some packing before heading out to dinner.

There was a unanimous decision regarding where to go for dinner; back to the Carnegie Deli! We headed down to the front of the hotel to get a taxi at 6PM, then – discovering that it had started to rain, I headed back up to the room to fetch the brolly. After about 15 minutes the doorman finally got us a taxi and we headed off – but it was a complete waste of time, gridlock having set in due to the Christmas tree lighting ceremony. Our plan was to get a taxi to the deli then walk back via Rockerfeller Center to see if we could get a glimpse of the tree.

The taxi had to take several detours to even get within 2 blocks of the deli – which was a good mile from the tree. We gave up on the cab and walked the last bit in the increasingly heavy rain. On the way, we passed Carnegie Hall – which now makes the name of the deli make a lot more sense.

The Carnegie Deli was every bit as good as our first visit – even though we did not get our favorite waiter, Wayne. The mile high sandwiches arrived – complete with bread that is at best a garnish on a sandwich of this magnitude. The corned beef is like no other I have every tasted – it literally (I mean it) melted in my mouth. This time both couples sensibly decided to split sandwiches; though Kat and Mike ordered something different - a humongous pile of corned beef served open face on top of a thick potato pancake (knish), the whole thing was topped with melted cheese.

We rolled out of the deli and headed down 7th street in the direction of Rockerfeller Center. It was raining quite heavy and for every step we took the crowd got bigger and bigger. Turning left we tried to move closer to the area of the tree, still a good 3 blocks away – but it was useless. At one point I did catch a distant glimpse of Aretha Franklin on a big screen TV, and we could hear her singing. We tried to find a bar to wait it out, but they were all full. I must say that the NYPD did a great job of crowd control – you’d think they’d done this kind of thing before! It was cold, wet, crowded and not getting any better – so we decided to head back to the hotel.

We headed up to our rooms, dried off and then headed to the bar for a final night cap. I managed to get the only table available in the bar, so finally something was going our way. We sat and reminisced about our fantastic trip while sipping a nice cold Guinness (Cosmo for Sandra) – all in all a terrific end to a terrific trip.