If you haven't had the opportunity to visit Manhattan but see yourself doing so sometime in the near future, I would heartily recommend that you secure for yourself a pass to ride on the Gray Line Tours bus system. They run all through Manhattan, as well as parts of Brooklyn (we skipped that part due to lack of time). You can sit on the open-air second floor and look all around at the sights as the knowledgeable, experienced, and often very funny tour guide talks about the more interesting features of the route. On my April trip to Manhattan with my family (staying near Times Square) , we got a 48-hour pass and rode Gray Line four times (with four different guides) (1) down to Chinatown (passing the remarkable Flatiron Building and Greenwich Village), (2) from Battery Park at the southern tip of Manhattan along the east side past Wall Street, Lower East Side, the Katz Deli (where Meg Ryan had her famous restaurant scene in
When Harry Met Sally), the Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburg Bridges, the vast stretch of World War II-era apartment buildings lining the East River, the United Nations complex, the Trump Tower, and the Rockefeller Center, (3) up Eighth Avenue past the Worldwide Building (with its golden pyramidal top), the Dakota Hotel (where John Lennon lived with Yoko and Sean and was shot), Central Park (including the memorial site directly across from the Dakota called Strawberry Fields, and the Museum of Natural History, and (4) from the Metropolitan Museum of Art past Central Park’s east side, past the Carnegie Deli and back to Times Square area. There were other routes we missed besides the Brooklyn tour, most notably the tour through Uptown Manhattan and Harlem. But time was definitely at a premium on our stay and we were forced to make some hard choices about where we went.
I had wanted to try out the subway system, but instead, once again appreciating how limited our time was, opted instead for the overland route so that we could see the sights. But that subway still lingers in my mind; I wonder how far you can go on it and how much it costs. Maybe I’ll just find that out right here on my computer (or you can, too). On the other hand, who am I kidding? I’m not going back anytime soon (although I want to).
And here are some pix from the vantage point of the Gray Line “rooftop”:
You might have already looked it up, but the subway fare is currently $2.25. The NYC system is a rare one, in that you pay that flat fare when you enter the system, and as long as you don't leave you can ride and ride and ride and ride, for as long as you want to, on the one fare.
ReplyDeleteThere are 468 stations, and people have had fun writing computer programs to try to build optimal routes that would take them to visit every station. There are about 230 miles of routes in the system, but, of course, since you can keep riding indefinitely, the number of miles you can ride on one fare is also indefinite. If you bring food and drink with you, you can go until your bladder bursts.