Last Full Day: Finally the City

For those of us infected, the pull is stronger the closer you get. The Siren's call grows from a quiet lullaby you can ignore while living 3500 miles away to a dull roar with which you want to converse when the proverbial doorstep is atop your head.

For us, that conversation was finally able to be had, and on our last full day in the Empire State.

We had wanted to share lunch with Marc down where he works, in lower Manhattan close to the WTC site, but having left Bedford too late (the Boy went down for a nap and we had to let him sleep), and getting out of the Grand Central by 1:30 after lunch, pretty much ended those plans. We took a train down to the area anyway, mostly to see if Marc wanted to get coffee, but also to see a few sights that were either not finished while we lived here or are on our personal list of attractions.

From there we started walking, and walked and walked, which is what you do in New York. We had a dinner reservation with one of my dad's younger sisters, my Auntie Anne, who works for NBC at 30 Rock. We were going to have dinner at her place in Jersey, and were mustering at Rockefeller Center between 4 and 6.

The map below shows, mostly accurately*, our walking path from the Calatrava-designed Oculus shopping center/train station way downtown all the way up to 30 Rock, between 49th and 50th Sts and 5th and 6th Aves:

*[We were on 5th Ave for longer than Broadway, which is only glaring for me and Corrie, who can pinpoint where the error is.]

Corrie had never been to a Santiago Calatrava designed building before, but had always wanted to see one. He's designed a museum in Milwaukee, bridges in Dallas, opera houses in his native Valencia, Spain, as well as other places all over the world.

Calatrava's work is always so obviously his that even I could recognize it. We came up from the subway, heads whipping around, "Where is it...?" Corrie was asking. We turned a corner from the subways stairs and, well, there it was:

White bony spines and spires are the earmark of Calatrava's work, and they're unmistakable. The Oculus shopping center and train station was always under either discussion or design during our time living in New York, and finally under construction when we visited back in 2013. To see it finished was really cool. That center between the spines in the picture above is the zipper like window in the picture below:

The space is so much larger than the outside suggests, and the PATH trains to New Jersey have their terminal entrance at the far side of this area.

There was large installation which I photographed from a distance, a mostly life-sized replica of the Sistine Chapel, with accompanying closeups and explanations:

We might have checked it out, but getting around the velvet barrier cost twenty bucks a head.

We exited and figured out we weren't going to get to see Marc, and headed to one of our favorite quiet attractions: the Irish Hunger Memorial. Much to our dismay, it was being worked on:

We chilled in the grass and let Cass meander out of the carrier for a few minutes. We'd decided to walk to 30 Rock, and knew that he'd have to be cooped up for the duration of that 4 to 5 mile walk, so we needed to let him get out some energy.

We took one last look at the Lady Liberty, and headed north:

Cass fell asleep pretty soon, and we sauntered up the Hudson on Manhattan's west coast. If there's one thing Cass sees plenty, it's water and boats and marinas:

Eventually we headed into the island and turned up Greenwich, but before really the Village itself. We went up to West 4th, through the Village a tiny ways, up 6th Ave to 10th, and over. We were heading for the Strand, another one of our favorite attractions: an enormous bookstore. West 10th is an amazing and beautiful street, and one of the things those of us infected treasure about the City. How much is a chance to live on W 10th worth to us? Hard to say...it'll never happen, but still. The following picture doesn't do justice to the tranquility:

After making it to the Strand we headed up Broadway for a bit, switched over to 5th Ave at the Flatiron Building, and switched back later on. Broadway is a long street, and by that I mean it's an ancient Indian trail from Canada that goes by NY Hwy 9 from the Canadian border all the way down the east side of the Hudson River to the Bronx, when it switches its name to Broadway.

By the time it hits Manhattan, it runs the entire length, from Inwood to the Battery, and cuts a bit diagonal through the normal grid work of Manhattan. When it hits major avenues, big intersectional jazz happen.

The gridding works like this: Avenues run north/south, with 1st Ave on the east side of the island and 12 Ave on the west side, facing the Hudson and Jersey. 5th Ave is the middle and about which the streets gain their East/West determinations. 5th Ave is also the eastern edge of Central Park. Streets run from 1st just above Houston all the way uptown, to the 240s in Inwood. The George Washington Bridge, the massive connector of Manhattan and Jersey, is around 180th St. South of Houston (SoHo) is its own thing, and then it all mostly breaks down from there into random nomenclature. There's the Bowery, the triangle below Canal (TriBeCa), the Village, and all sorts of other neighborhoods before Wall St.

Back to my earlier train of thought: when Broadway hits 8th Ave, it creates Columbus Circle. When it crosses 7th Ave, it's Times Square; 6th Ave and Broadway is Bryant Park; 5th Ave and Broadway is Herald Square and the Flatiron Building (that's what causes that shape: the strange leftovers from an irregular street intersection). 4th Avenue is Park Ave, and it creates Union Square at its Broadway intersection, and down even further gets you Macy Square at 3rd Ave, the final stop for the the Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Anyway, I'm a sucker for the slow undulations of this street, as you can see it curving off in the distance, a mostly unseen thing in a city with miles and miles of straight streets:

After the bookstore, we switched wearing the Boy, and at some point Corrie started nursing Cass as we walked. She wanted a picture to help normalize public breastfeeding and baby-wearing:

It was during this time that we were stopped by a group of young ladies who asked if they could interview us for a segment on the Today Show. Cass let go of the boob and started flirting as we answered questions about "beauty tips for beating the summer heat." They had us pinned for locals (KICK ASS).

We made it to 30 Rock, took a quick walk around, got a tiny boost of sugar and fat because we were famished and tired, and went on to do one of the worst things during our entire NY trip: we took an Uber.

From essentially Radio City Music Hall to Leonia, New Jersey, a cute berg just north of the GW Bridge, we rode in somebody's sedan. There was no car seat, and we felt that it was both dangerous and illegal, but it was what it was. On a bus you wouldn't need a carseat...what about a yellow cab? We didn't know, and with an Uber it seemed another layer removed from a plausible idea.

Nothing bad happened, thank goodness, but still it felt like a bad idea at the time when it was happening.

Here's picture from the bridge looking back at Manhattan:

Both my Auntie Anne and her husband are executives at NBC. They have no kids, so their house in Leonia is quite large and quite full of all sorts of cool shit that I could spend hours checking out and pouring over. On this trip I had to keep Cass from becoming his own form of the Tasmanian Devil, the "Cyclone of Long Beach" we called him as he destroyed Marco's Baroque Lego garage.

Auntie Clare came and retrieved us, her Tesla having our car seat, and we headed back to Bedford after a nice Italian dinner. The highway we were on cut through Connecticut momentarily, so we got to add that to Cass's list.

Clare and Henry's place in Bedford will be looked at more closely in an upcoming piece. Their generosity and hospitality were top notch, and we appreciated all the time we got to spend with both of my Sherwood Aunties.