AUTUMN IN NEW YORK

 

HOW WE SPENT THE FALL OF 2005

We are having fun playing at being New Yorkers. We feel quite comfortable using the subway and buzzing all around. This park is ideal. We can hop on a ferry literally at our doorstep for$4.50 and land at the end of Wall Street. We can also walk five blocks to the New Jersey PATH subway. It drops us off at the World Trade Center hole or another line will take us as far as 33rd Street. We took a taxi the first day and decided it was too expensive and too slow.
We also transferred to a bus to take us to the Circle Line where we did the three-hour cruise completely around Manhattan. That gave us a good overview of the city.

Zoe loved the musical, Spamalot even though she is not a Monty Python fan. I loved it too but I would never go to the Schubert Theater again.The space in front of the seats is so narrow that your knees keep hitting the head of the person in front of you. I knew my knees would never make it and tried to snatch an end seat but a bitchy usher drove me out. Fortunately, the head usher gave me a chair in the aisle of the top row. After the show, we grabbed the subway in the rain and got off at 13th Street to eat in a restaurant that a guy told me has the best paella in New York. The dish was so big that I took it home and had two more meals out of it. We sloshed home through the rain and felt like real, if wet, New Yorkers. Other than that day, the weather has been beautiful.

We also went to the opera Aida and had dinner at the Met. We took a limo there and back though as we don't want to ride the subway after midnight. He picked us up right here in the park. We are also going to The Lion King but it is a matinee. We have managed to see several districts. On Sunday we visited the Soho district and cruised the street vendors near Houston Street. We had to have lunch at the restaurant called Zoe, of course. Other districts we’ve seen are the Financial, Greenwich Village, Chelsea, and, of course, the Theater District. We’ve also learned the difference between Uptown and Downtown. We had a fascinating tour of CNN and the new Time Warner buildings.

We are learning to pace ourselves though and take off some days in between. We have dined out a lot and have not had a bad meal. Wonderful food. The people of New York have been amazingly helpful and pleasant. One woman even loaned me her Metro pass to get through a turnstile and then made very sure that we got on the right subway.

Leaving Sunday for Bar Harbor, MD and on our way back to Mesa.

SKYLINE FROM THE HUDSON NEAR SO TIP OF ISLAND

 

AN EXCELLENT RESTAURANT. 3 THINGS ON THE MENU

 

OUR RIVER BOAT ON THE ELBE IN CZECH

 

GATE AT WITTENBERG WITH LUTHER'S 95 THESIS

 

CLIFFS IN BAD SCHENDAU

 

OUR RIVER TRIPS IN EASTERN EUROPE

Blog 24 Eastern Europe

We are back from a month on two river cruises in Eastern Europe (they prefer to call it Central Europe now). The first cruise was from Berlin to Prague on the Elbe and Moldau Rivers. Then we took a train to Vienna and the second cruise was from Vienna to Bucharest. It was a very interesting trip and we learned a lot about political and economic issues of these countries: Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Czech, Slovakia, Serbia and Romania They are trying to bounce back from the drain on their nations when they were under Communist rule. The Communists took everything and gave nothing (except for excellent schooling according to some). There is great unemployment, massive graffiti and abandoned factories everywhere.

The highlights of the first cruise were: Wittenberg (site of Luther’s edicts that divided the Catholic Church), cruising the canals of the Worlitz gardens near Dessau, Bad Schandau with elegant cliffs on the Elbe River and the fascinating city of Prague that had virtually no damage to its historic building during the war.

The second cruise, on the Danube, highlights were: lunch at a peasant farm in Serbia, the dam and high cliffs at the Iron Gates, going to a Hungarian ranch to watch the cowboys, and the rebuilt Dresden cathedral that was recently rededicated. Lovern’s daughter Peggy was with us and that added another dimension of fun.

Now we are headed to Liberty Harbor RV Park on the Hudson River directly across from Manhattan. A ferry is right at the park that goes to Manhattan. We plan two weeks of touring that include productions of “Spamalot” (musical version of Monty Python and the Holy Grail), “The Lion King”, and the opera “Aida”. We are looking forward to it.

From New York we will travel slowly west towards Arizona and will probably stay there for a few months. Lovern needs rotator cuff surgery.

THE IRON GATE AREA OF ROMANIA ON DANUBE

 

LUNCH AT A SERBIAN FARM HOUSE

 

HUNGARIAN COWBOY