Traveling

Part 1

Part 2

Part 4

It's the afternoon and we're on the express bus to NYC. We head up the Baltimore Parkway, I-295. It starts out I-295 but before we reach Baltimore it's turned into MD-295. The trees are beautiful and the parkway is lined with fall colors.

At Baltimore we get back on I-95 as we pass the harbor. It's been a long time since I've seen the Atlantic Ocean. There are large container ships and the huge cranes that load them. We go through a tunnel under the harbor that's lined with shine white tiles. We pass the railyard soon after coming out.

The driver pays a toll and we head around Chesapeake Bay toward Delaware. I-95 is also the JFK Memorial Highway along here. The bridge over the Susquehanna River is also toll and very long. I can see a rail bridge and another auto bridge downstream from us.

We're still on I-95 as we cross the state line to Delaware. Just before Wilmington we turn east on I-295 and cross the Delaware River into New Jersey. Just after we leave I-295 and get on the New Jersey Turnpike which we take to New York City. I-95 joins us along the way.

It starts to get dark as we ride through New Jersey. Finally we see the lights of New York as the traffic gets even heavier. The driver takes some roundabout way to get on the Lincoln Tunnel entrance and soon we're going through the tunnel. This is scary to me. I usually like tunnels but the traffic is so heavy, though it never stops moving, and the tunnel is so long that my claustrophobia starts sending quivers through my stomach. If I wasn't so excited about seeing New York City and my daughter I would have been even more upset.

Finally we come out into New York and pull into the Port Authority. I'm one of the first off and there's Lisa. It is so good to see her. It's been too long since I saw her last. I thought that it was hard when my son left for college but it's just as hard with Lisa. I'm so proud of both of them for having the courage to live their own life and go out into the world.

Well, I saw most of NYC in one week. I saw it fast but I loved it. The next day Lisa took me on a whirlwind tour of NYC and some of her favorite places. We took the subway to Chinatown and she took me on a whirlwind tour through Chinatown, Midtown, Rockefeller Center, Grand Central Station, Times Square and Soho. It was so much fun.

We stopped at Fraunces Tavern where the revolutionaries met to plan their fight against the British. This was very serendipidous as I hadn't even thought of it. It was interesting to see the museum they have and peek in the restaurant where they are still serving meals.

We went into the New York Stock Exchange where we watched the people. It wasn't quite as crazy as I expected. Most of them were just typing away at their computers. It was awesome to think of all the money that they were moving around. There is even a gift shop there, so they can get more of your money.

The financial district is so tight and the streets so small. In places I doubt the sun every got through except at noon. I felt like like I was walking through a tunnel. We came out into light and then walked along Broadway. It seemed like everything was something I'd seen in movies or read about in books or heard about on the news. It was all so alive, though. It felt like a real energy was running through NYC and everyone hurried with it.

At Rockefeller Center we watched the skaters and watchers. Nearby there was a crowd gathered around a window. Peering through the crowd we saw everyone was watching the shuttle launch that carried John Glenn back into space. Then we walked and walked till we reached Grand Central Station. They've done a wonderful job renovating it. It is so huge and beautiful.

Lisa took me to lunch at a tiny restaurant (it seats about 6, if they're small) where we had falafel. We also met my aunt and cousin one night at Chinese restaurant in Soho. It was a small place also but the food was so good and the prices very reasonable. One evening Joel cooked us a lovely dinner at his place. We ate well.

One day we rented a car and drove up the Hudson valley to a hiking trail Lisa knew. She had been there before when Joel and some other artists had a performance art show. We walked through some great fall colors and past the foundation of an old house. It was so relaxing as we looked out over the Hudson River.

After a nice hike we drove over to Rye to see our family plot, but the cemetery office was closed and we couldn't find it. There were some great gravestones. Coming back into NYC we just stopped. It took a couple hours to get through NYC. We finally got to the bottleneck and saw that a semi was being towed off.

On Halloween we went to see the parade but there were so many people we could hardly see anything. The police were out in force and it was crowded just coming out of the subway. People were dressed so wacky and funny. There was every kind of costume. The crowd was almost as fun to watch as the parade. The parade was amazing.

I really lucked out. Not only did I get there for the Halloween parade, but the NYC Marathon. They came across the Verrazano Bridge and through Brooklyn a block from where Lisa lives. I watched the tow trucks removing cars parked along the route and then the people in wheelchairs and on crutches came. They all got applause from the people waiting.

After what seemed forever the motorcycles escorts came and then the runners started coming, and then coming and coming and coming. They were in good shape where we were, but they had a long way to go. There were the runners with funny hats and the people waiting near us all had someone they were watching for. Later, on the subway, we heard a group of people discussing where they should get off to catch one of the runners again. That is such a cool way to follow a marathon.

I see NYC on the maps and it looks so small but it took us nearly two hours by subway and bus from Brooklyn to the Bronx. Lisa and I went to the Bronx Botanical Gardens and enjoyed the beautiful gardens. They have a conservatory that looks like a glass palace. It's great that there is this wonderful piece of nature in the city. We walked through the woods and the herb gardens and the flower gardens.

One day we took the ferry to see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. The ferry leaves from Fort Clinton, which is near Fraunces Tavern. Fort Clinton was also part of the Revolutionary War and from it's location at the tip of the island has some great views of NYC. There are also several monuments and statues in Battery Park which surrounds Castle Clinton.

We climbed all the way to the top of the Statue of Liberty and took pictures of each other peering from the top. There's a very interesting museum with the original lamp. Needing a rest after the climb we had lunch with birds.

Ellis Island was great as my paternal grandmother came through there. How terrifying it must have been for all those people who knew they could be sent back for the slightest illness or defect. Hundreds and hundreds of names are listed, many of them spelled wrong due to language problems.

We listened to tapes of people speaking about their experiences and saw the luggage and clothes that people brought. I pack more for a weekend trip than many of the immigrants owned. I would hate to ever see our borders closed as this constant influx of new people is one thing that I feel keeps our country alive. I had a lump in my throat thinking about my grandmother and all the others who showed incredible courage to leave everything and everyone to come to a strange country.

I had a few days by myself after Lisa had to go back to work and I had so much fun walking around NYC and visiting all the museums. I went on one volkswalk that went from the west side of Central Park, past the Lincoln Center, right through the middle of Manhattan on Broadway. It curved through Times Square and headed over to the United Nations and then back through Manhattan. I went by the statue of Christopher Columbus at the entrance of Central Park, where they were filming something, and back through Central Park to the start point.

I went past MOMA and the New York Public Library, the Empire State Building and the Rockefeller Center. This is one great walk. I stopped at some places but had the check out most of them another day. This is a great volkswalk. The other YRE in NYC goes through Central Park and I'll do that one next visit.

Another day I went up to the top of the World Trade Center and the Empire State Building. I looked through Moma, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Historical Society, the Museum of Natural History and the New York Transit Museum. Well, actually it took part of two other days also, and even then I was moving fast. I could spend weeks at most of the museums.

Well, the World Trade Center is like a shopping center and amusement park on top of the world. Beautiful views. The Empire State Building also has great views, but without the shopping center and amusement park. Classier looking building too. It was fun picking out the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty and all the other places I'd been to over the past week.

Moma is very nice, but I wanted to see early 20th century American painters, and there was a Pollock exhibit, which was drawing huge crowds, and taking up the space that the other painters would have been in. Pollock does nothing for me, which is just as well, as I didn't have a ticket.

The Met is absolutely wonderful. I felt like I was running and yet saw just a fraction of what they have. Some highlights were the Egyptian exhibit and the Tiffany exhibit. I saw paintings from the old masters, who I love, to some modern artists that I never heard of. I could to spend several weeks here and just scratch the surface.

The New York Historical Society was a bit of a surprise as I was on my way to the Mueseum of Natural History when I saw it. They had an exhibit of the NYC Police Department, and not all of it was flattering, but very interesting. They had some architect drawings of George B. Post who built the New York Stock Exchange, City College and the Williamsburg Savings Bank.

They had recreated a picture gallery from a 1832 townhouse of Luman Reed who was a patron of American artists. They had quite a few of the early American pictures. They were very interesting. Many of them seemed to go in for rather unrealistic nature scenes. I enjoy historical museums.

The Museum of Natural History was another one that I could spend weeks at. It has so much. They have a great evolution exhibit and an exhibit on ecosystems that is very well done. I loved all the dinosaurs and birds and animals. It's a little shuddery to think these are all real dead animals as this is how they used to stock all their museums.

Last but certainly not least, except in size, was the New York Transit Museum which is in downtown Brooklyn. It's in an old subway tunnel and has old subway cars that you can go in. They have a good history of building the subway. It was quite a project and cost quite a few lives. They dug the tunnel under the river by pick and shovel basically. Fascinating. I got a subway tshirt. Together with my metro tshirt from Washington DC, these were my souvenirs.

It was a wonderful week. I was tired and ready to go home, but I do want to go back. I would love to live in NYC for a while just to see all there is to see.