harryfat1 Posted July 19 Author #1451 Share Posted July 19 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harryfat1 Posted July 19 Author #1452 Share Posted July 19 After dinner, we walked around a few stores in Koreatown. They have a food hall next door that you can eat there for a faster food experience. I had marked it as a possible food option later in the trip if we were in the area but never returned. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harryfat1 Posted July 19 Author #1453 Share Posted July 19 As it was my son's birthday that day, we went looking for a birthday cake to celebrate his birthday in NYC. Many interesting choices: 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harryfat1 Posted July 19 Author #1454 Share Posted July 19 After getting the cake, we walked around Korea Town a little more and decided to head back to the hotel NYC is similar to Vegas – it looks much better at night when all lid up. This is the Summit One at night time (where we were earlier this morning) Chrysler building in the background as many people are still walking around at 9:45 PM 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harryfat1 Posted July 19 Author #1455 Share Posted July 19 This was the birthday cake he selected 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harryfat1 Posted July 19 Author #1456 Share Posted July 19 Another advantage of having a kitchen is you can make some hot tea to go with the cake as well as having plates/forks to eat the cake... Per my phone app, we walked 6.25 miles today. In theory, this would be an end-of-the-day entry except that there was a sign at the elevator that said there would be a water shutdown for 4 hours after midnight on Friday. So we thought the water shutdown would be TOMORROW night at midnight. But we didn’t read it carefully as it said 12:01 AM on Friday, which is 1 minute after midnight on THURSDAY night, tonight. When on vacation, I’m typically the last person in the family to take a shower. It’s always the boys first and then my wife and I’m last. By the time I was done, it was just after midnight. When I tried to brush my teeth afterward, no water. Huh? WTH? I thought the water outage was tomorrow night. Then we figured out that it was 1 minute after midnight tonight. Damn. So I had to brush my teeth using the bottled water. Good thing I showered just before midnight. If we had known that, we would have come back to the hotel much earlier and have everything done by 11:30 PM. Oh, well… Now this really concludes day 2 of the NYC trip report… 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare perfect match Posted July 19 #1457 Share Posted July 19 On 7/16/2024 at 9:32 PM, harryfat1 said: The first item on the agenda is a big one as we hit the ground running in booking the observation deck at Summit One. NYC has like 5 observation decks and this is the newest one. It’s easily an Instammger’s dream spot as you can fill your Instagram pages (or a CC trip report) just with one visit. I loved all of your pictures from Summit One! Never been there. Can you tell me when the building was first opened? DH and I REALLY miss NY pizza 🍕! Here in Florida we have so called NY pizza, but there’s no comparison to the real thing. We’ve found a few places here that come close enough that we’ll eat them when we need a pizza fix but spend the whole time thinking about the pizza we wish we were eating. It does not surprise me at all what a great job you’ve done in researching your NY trip and how well you’ve planned out your days. As a bit of a planner myself, I appreciate your skills. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harryfat1 Posted July 19 Author #1458 Share Posted July 19 10 hours ago, perfect match said: I loved all of your pictures from Summit One! Never been there. Can you tell me when the building was first opened? DH and I REALLY miss NY pizza 🍕! Here in Florida we have so called NY pizza, but there’s no comparison to the real thing. We’ve found a few places here that come close enough that we’ll eat them when we need a pizza fix but spend the whole time thinking about the pizza we wish we were eating. It does not surprise me at all what a great job you’ve done in researching your NY trip and how well you’ve planned out your days. As a bit of a planner myself, I appreciate your skills. Summit One opened in the Fall of 2021. It's the newest observation deck in NYC. Many people (including myself) will argue it's the best observation deck experience although I only went to 3 of them during my visit. Depending on if you like the crowd or not in your pictures I believe many "influencers" (new titles for people are using for YouTubers and Instagrammers who "influence" the behaviors of the general public) go up early to avoid crowds in their videos/pictures. The earliest time slot is at 9 AM. So if you want to be in front of the line without people, plan to arrive at 8:30 to wait for them to start so you are ensured to find a quiet corner to do your spiel before the masses shows up and ruin your solo Instagram photo. NY style pizza is very different in being thin sliced and I just like to "window shop" in walking into a place and seeing many toppings on display. It's like walking into an ice cream store with all the flavors behind the glass case. We certainly don't have anything like this in CA. Thanks for the compliment. I'm pretty sure I "overplanned" (9.2 anal scale people tend to do that) in researching many spots that we never made it to during our trip. If you look at my Google map whenever I show the destination, you will see many "green" flags. Those are destinations that I tagged on the map as want to go. Didn't make it to all of them. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harryfat1 Posted July 19 Author #1459 Share Posted July 19 10 hours ago, perfect match said: I loved all of your pictures from Summit One! Never been there. Can you tell me when the building was first opened? DH and I REALLY miss NY pizza 🍕! Here in Florida we have so called NY pizza, but there’s no comparison to the real thing. We’ve found a few places here that come close enough that we’ll eat them when we need a pizza fix but spend the whole time thinking about the pizza we wish we were eating. It does not surprise me at all what a great job you’ve done in researching your NY trip and how well you’ve planned out your days. As a bit of a planner myself, I appreciate your skills. There are hundreds/thousands of YouTube videos on the Summit One Experience, here's one of them: 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harryfat1 Posted July 19 Author #1460 Share Posted July 19 (edited) Day 3, June 28 – Lower Manhattan/Wall Street/and 9/11 Memorial/One World Trade Center Typical hotel breakfast. OK, time to break out the 7-day unlimited MetroCard. Each subway ride is $2.90 but if you will be in NYC for multiple days, it’s better to buy the unlimited 7-day pass for $34. You can also use your credit card/cell phone to make contactless payments at the scanner if you don’t want to buy the card but we opted for the card to have as a memento in the scrapbook afterwards. Since we were in town for 9 days, I had to plan on at least one day of not using the subway, which was yesterday (day 2) as it’s closer to our hotel. From now on, we will be venturing out further from the hotel to explore more of Manhattan. Edited July 19 by harryfat1 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harryfat1 Posted July 19 Author #1461 Share Posted July 19 As we have multiple destinations for the day, I will start the map of just going from the hotel to the start of the walking tour. Then I will map out a few of the places of the walking tour after we get there. Our hotel is in the middle of Manhattan (midtown) and for today, we are heading south (DOWNTOWN) to the edge of the island. I capitalize the word DOWN as it’s important to understand how NYC subway signs work. If you are going northbound, you are going UPTOWN as in going UP on the map facing northward. If you are heading south, then you are going DOWNTOWN. The subway entrances/train signs all use the UPTOWN and DOWNTOWN on their directions. So you need to at least know which direction you are going so you don’t catch the wrong train. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harryfat1 Posted July 19 Author #1462 Share Posted July 19 So for today, we are heading DOWNTOWN in going south to join the “free” walking tour that will take us through southern Manhattan/wall street and various post 9/11 sites. From our hotel area, the #4 or #5 trains run every few minutes and if you can catch the express train, it’s only a few stops to get you to Battery Park, the southern edge of Manhattan to start the tour. About half of the 27 minute commute is walking as the actual subway ride is only 13 minutes. You will need to ignore all the green tags on my Google map as I tagged many places in NYC on the map as “want to go” so I can retrieve it quickly during my travel. You should tag the sites you want to see when you plan your trip to NYC. The subway entrance is like 6 blocks from our hotel. So you can see on the map that the subway drops you off at Bowling Green Station after which you will walk to the historical Castle Clinton (No, not named after the former President Bill Clinton. This story goes way back couple of hundred of years). 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harryfat1 Posted July 20 Author #1463 Share Posted July 20 As soon as you walk outside of the subway station at Bowling Green, there will be 5 to 10 people wearing red polo shirts(picture below in the middle) trying to scam you in trying to buy statute of liberty ferry tickets that actually does not get you to the liberty island itself. You need to walk past them quickly or else they are on top of you like fly on food – very similar to aggressive shore side workers in the Caribbean docks trying to get you into their taxi. I will talk more about the Statue of Liberty info later on but since our walking tour shares the same line up area as the Statue of Liberty cruise sailing, we were bombarded by these folks as soon as we walked out. It is so bad that NYC actually has a sign out on the sidewalk warning people these are scammers but yet they are brazen enough they don't care: You just need to walk past them to head for Castle Clinton. The whole area is called Battery Park and Castle Clinton is inside the park. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harryfat1 Posted July 20 Author #1464 Share Posted July 20 This is a very busy area as it’s also the end of the long line to board the statue of liberty ferry as well as the ticket purchase area. You will see workers there directing traffic. You book statue of liberty ferry tickets on the half hour appoitmnet basis (i.e. same 10/10:30/11 and so on format). We were there early at 10:05 for the 10:30 walking tour as we were still energetic at the beginning of the vacation. As the week wore on, we barely made it to most of the starting time of the tour. Anyway, the workers there were directing the people waiting in line for the statue of liberty ferry to only be in line if their appointment time was before 10:30. There were people trying to stand in line at 10:05 for their 11:30 appitment were turned away and told to come back later as they were only allowing people up to 10:30 time slot to be in linea s to minimize the traffic congestion. I highly recommend people to reserve the statue of liberty tickets online instead of buying them in person as 1) you get to pick whatever time slot that fits your schedule 2) you don’t have to stand in line to buy your tickets as the time slots at walk up might be few hours later in the afternoon and they won’t allow you to stand in line too early. Avoid the ticket line if you buy ahead of time and you get to pick a time you want 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harryfat1 Posted July 20 Author #1465 Share Posted July 20 We will talk more about the statue ticketing on day 5 when we get there. But today at day 3, it’s the walking tour. This is a “free” tour of the lower Manhattan/Wall Street area. I put the word “free” in quote as we all know there’s no such thing as a free tour as you have to pay the company for the organization of reservation and obvoiusly the tour guide him/herself. They called it “free” in that there’s no upfront cost. You pay what you think the tour is worth. The guides are asking $20+/pp but you pay whatever you think based on how satisfied you were with the tour. I discovered this business model on the Odyssey cruise on the tour of Curaaco (scroll up to read about that tour) and after doing some research, I found there are different companies that offers “free” tours at many cities worldwide – including NYC but also many cities worldwide like Paris/London/Rome/Madrid/Tokyo/Shanghai and the list goes on. Just Google “free walking tours” and you will find few companies using this business model. So if you get nothing else out of this supplemtntal NYC trip report, just remember there are free (discounted) walking tours available worldwide. The money you saved from these discounted tours, you can buy me a glass of iced tea at the Windjammer on the next cruise… Anyway, the tour today is with Guruwalk. Here’s the web site: https://www.guruwalk.com/walks/44050-vip-financial-district-stroll-walk-through-time-live-history-and-explore-hidden-marvels Here is the list of places we would be seeing. Too lazy to type all the sights, you can see on your own. I like it that they provide you a listing of sites you will be seeing as well as places on the map so you have an idea on where is what. This is what it looks like on Google map if you map it out yourself: 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harryfat1 Posted July 20 Author #1466 Share Posted July 20 Anyway, the instruction says to meet the tour guide (with purple umbrella) at 10:20 in front of Castle Clinton to check in with the guide and the tour is supposed to start at 10:30. As we got there few minutes early, we walked around the aera on our own before the tour officially started at 10:30. We start with the statue of Giovanni Da Verrazzano, who was an Italian explorer. According to history books, was the first European to step foot on the modern day NYC back in 1524. Of course, the place wasn’t called NYC back then. But they have a statue there to honor his accomplishment. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harryfat1 Posted July 20 Author #1467 Share Posted July 20 (edited) We then went to the small visitor area of the Castle Clinton to see pictures of NYC back in 1812 when the castle was built. Part of NYC as we see it now are landfill so where we were standing was part of the Atlantic Ocean 200+ years ago. We then walked over few blocks to Bowling Green, the city’s very first park. Along the way, the guide pointed few important buildings as we walked past them. Edited July 20 by harryfat1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harryfat1 Posted July 20 Author #1468 Share Posted July 20 First NYC park 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harryfat1 Posted July 20 Author #1469 Share Posted July 20 After Bowling Green, we went over to the Wall Street Bull. This was an artwork that was completed after the 1987 Wall Street big collapse of “Black Monday”. The charging Bull (signifying a rising market) was to give people hope that the stocks would one day rise back up. This has become one of the largest draws for tourists as they want to come here for a good fortune to take a picture with the charging bull. And others want to touch/rub the Bull’s private parts. Personally, I find it pretty gross as 1) It’s animal cruelty. Surprised no one has called animal protection services to file a complaint against animal abuse of thousands/millions of people coming by to abuse this bull in touching his private parts without his permission 2) With Covid, the last thing I want to do is touch the same spot that thousands/millions of people regularly touch. That spot is germ factory... But I guess that’s only me as there’s a huge line of people waiting to have their pictures taken at the front/back of the bull. No, this is not the line for free beer. It’s the line to touch the Bull’s private parts… You can form your own judgment on what you think of this practice. I voice my opinion already. As they said in YouTube – leave a comment below.. We just had the tour guide take a picture of us by the side of the bull to say we were there… 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harryfat1 Posted July 20 Author #1470 Share Posted July 20 Fraunces Tavern – established in the 1760. Supposedly some of the American Founding Fathers wined and dined here. Who knows what historical issues were discussed there? And you thought I took a picture of this place to show you the food on the Taco Truck…🤪 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harryfat1 Posted July 20 Author #1471 Share Posted July 20 NY Stock Exchange. No introduction is necessary for this institution. Before 9/11, they used to allow visitors to see the inside of the exchange. Of course, now everything is high security in NY where we had our backpacks opened/scanned at every major place we went to. Totally different world compared to the old days. Now it’s all fenced in with the police presence on the outside. The same artist that created the charging did this little girl statue. Supposed to symbolize a little girl staring down at the "old boys' network" of Wall Street and promoting gender equality on Wall Street 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harryfat1 Posted July 20 Author #1472 Share Posted July 20 After the NYSE, there’s the Federal Hall. Too bad they are doing renovations as the place looks nice from pictures online without the scaffolding. This was where George Washington was sworn in as the first President of the US along with many other historical events. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harryfat1 Posted July 20 Author #1473 Share Posted July 20 Trinity Church. Weird to think of the Manhattan area as having a cemetery but the church area is the burial ground of Alexander Hamilton (Broadway Musical for those not into history) and some historical figures Hamilton's gravesite. People leave money there as he was the first Secretary of Treasury for the US Fulton – who’s name is at one of the subway stations was also an influential person in the era 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harryfat1 Posted July 20 Author #1474 Share Posted July 20 Freedom Tower/One World Trade Center along with the 9/11 Memorial fountains. There are 2 fountains – North and South fountains occupying the same footprint as the original twin towers. When we were there, only the south water fountain was in operation as they were doing maintenance to the other one. They designed the North and South Pools so that you can’t see the bottom of the pool standing from the edges of the pool They engraved the victims of the 9/11 attack by where they were working at the time of the attack. For example, we were standing at the South Pool (formerly South Tower), the S-32 number engraved which meant these people were on 32nd floor of the South Tower... 6 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harryfat1 Posted July 20 Author #1475 Share Posted July 20 Most of the trees in the area were destroyed during the 9/11 attack but one tree survived (although badly damaged). They nursed the tree back to full health and now they have a barrier around the tree to mark its significance now is called "Survivor Tree". I saw on YouTube that whenever there are disasters elsewhere worldwide, they take a small beach from this tree to ship to the disaster site to grow there 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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