Friday October 9, 2015 New York City, New York

I had set the alarm on my iPad for 7:30.  We didn't hear it.  It never occurred to me that Gerri turns off the sound.  We had planned to have breakfast before our city tour at 10 AM.  We canceled those plans.  I made coffee with the coffee maker in the room.

At a quarter till 10 we went to the lobby and met our guide for the day.  It turns out our guide, Lee, was a lifelong resident of NYC having been born in Queens and in the past has lived in both Manhattan and Brooklyn.  Our driver came at 10,  His name was Moshe and he was originally from Israel.

Lee had an amazing litany of facts about the locations we drove by and stories about what used to be in the different locations.

There was heavy traffic which Moshe navigated adroitly reacting quickly to Lee's directional instructions, which I thought sometimes came too late for the turn.

Conservation Gardens, Central Park

Fishing Lake in Central Park

 I think everyone knows how I love the desert and the mountain.  We do enjoy forests and woodlands for visits.  It is hard to describe the feelings I get when visiting New York City.  There is a vibrant quality here that I haven't experienced in other large cities.  I guess it is the mixture of cultures, the hustle and bustle and the feeling of history all rolled together.  It is hard to believe, when looking at New York today, that so much of colonial and early national history is rooted here or within 250 miles.  Our revolution ended less than 50 miles away.

Guggenheim Building

WWI Memorial

Rockefeller Center

Flatiron Building

Empire State Building

Battery Park

Freedom Tower

Moshe and Lee

Lee and Moshe dropped us at the entrance of the Empire State Building.  Our 4 hour tour had turned into 5 hours.












We had VIP Experiance tickets for the Empire State Building.  This got us out of most of the lines but we still had to go through airport like security,  The rain that was forecast hadn't come in but it was windy and cloudy when we were on the observation floor of the Empire State Building.  We did a circle around and then left.

Top of Empire State Building

We planned to take a taxi back to the hotel.  We were foiled in that, we weren't able to flag one down.  The forecast rain was coming so we accepted a pedicab ride.  With traffic and heavy rain it took 20 minutes to get to our hotel.

 We got back to the hotel during a pause in the rain.  We decided to go to Roxy's Diner, just across the street..














Neva and I had Hamburgers and Gerri had a meatloaf sandwich.  While we ate the rain and wind started in earnest.  We watched a parade of umbrellas going by, some inside out.


We got lucky and the rain slackened before we walked back to the hotel.  We were in for the night  After computer chores and reading we called it a night