- Tonight is our last night in the USA, and so we packed all the sightseeing we could handle into one day. After taking the rental car back, which went much quicker than I thought, and buying new glasses at the dollar store (if there were any typos in last night’s blog, it’s because my glasses went missing), we had breakfast at Dunkin’ Donuts and then took the bus across the bridge into the city.
- The plan was to go to the base of the High Line and start walking, and we more or less stuck to that, but Dean counldn’t resist showing us some stuff on the way, such as the Chelsea Market, which is an excellent example of what you can do with an ugly, old, abandoned brick factory and a bit of imagination. I especially liked the door frame of fragmented bricks, as if The Incredible Hulk had just run through the wall, and a waterfall which was just water pouring out of a huge hose hung up along the ceiling.
- The High Line is a wonderful example of how to recycle a neighborhood. It was an elevated rail line, which was built specifically to serve the meat packing industry, and had become obsolete. Now it is an urban garden/art museum/floating island of tranquillity above the mean streets of the city. It runs from 12th street up to 34th, but somewhere in the 20s it takes a sharp left and then it gets a much better view of the Hudson and New Jersey, but I felt they got a bit slack on the gardens and statuary after that point as well, so it was a bit of a trade off.
- Then we went to the Empire State Building but stopped at Five Guys for lunch. They gave us so many fries we wound up giving a big cupful of them to a homeless guy. After the ESB (we just went into the lobby, it costs money to go to the top – a lot of it), everybody except me wanted to do shopping so Sam went into a shoe store while Helena and Isabel went into another store, and I sat and waited and enjoyed watching the people of New York, a lot of whom, I’m sure, were no more from New York than we are. Then we went into Macy’s. It’s really big.
- Then we started our walk downtown and they were stopping into shops every few blocks until we got to the Flat Iron building, which was another tick off Sam’s list. Then one more attempt to buy phones, but they really are not a better deal hear than in Prague, so that one is not going to happen.
- Then, after a very confusing (and hot – why are the subways so damned hot?) subway ride, we met Dean and Maria T. for a Los Lobos concert at Battery City Park. It was a fun concert, although I think it was better for us old farts than the kids. A 70s band playing 70s music for 70s people.
- Took the bus home through the Lincoln Tunnel. Walking home, saw a skunk, just standing there as innocent as a cat in somebody’s front yard. We crossed the street.
- Tomorrow night at 9:15 p.m. we take off for Prague, non-stop.
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