Fifty-four of us spent nine action-packed days in New York with Alki Tours. Our Tour Director was Ursula Pfeffer who lived in New York for 34 years. As Ursula says, 'When angels travel, the sun will smile.' Everyone must have behaved. The weather stayed at 74-degrees as we explored all nine boroughs of the Big Apple.Our hotel, Holiday Inn Martinique on Broadway, was one block from the Empire State Building. The $325 room rate reminded me that most people who work in Manhattan cannot afford to live there. They commute by subway, bus or train. That is why at rush hour people spill into the streets. There isn't room for everyone on the sidewalks.
We traveled to Battery Park where we caught a Circle Tour ferry to the Statue of Liberty. There was a 15-minute wait while a sniffer dog checked the vessel for explosives. On the island, we explored the Park Ranger Station. We didn't enter the Statue because the line at the metal detectors was too long. The ferry took us on to Ellis Island where 12 million immigrants became Americans during 1892 to 1900. Only two percent were found to have a serious disease. They were given a free passage back to Europe.
Back at Battery Park, South Street Seaport provided a refreshing view of the tall ships in the East River harbor and offered inviting seafood restaurants. The Brooklyn Bridge is the oldest suspension in the world. What a beautiful sight it is!
Near Battery Park and Wall Street, we stopped to pay our respects at Ground Zero, an enormous gaping hole where two commercial airplanes crashed into the Twin Towers and killed 2,000 innocent victims. The smell of burnt steel still hung in the air four years later. Most noteable was a black, iron Cross found in the rubble and raised over the debris. Bagpipes played at a memorial service. Hundreds of visitors paused at the wire fence and lit candles or placed flowers at memorials in nearby Trinity Church.
Another spiritual high was our trip to a newly-regenerated Harlem where we attended a rousing service at the Convent Street Baptist Church and had a lunch of chicken, ribs, and catfish at the famed Sylvia's Soul Food Restaruant.
Sixty miles upstate on the Hudson River is West Point Military Academy. It's located on a 16,000-acre training site for cadets. Looking up the Hudson River, I realized all the great generals had stood at this viewpoint: Washington, Grant, McArthur, Patton and Eisenhower. It was here that a chain stretched across a narrow point of the river stopped the British fleet and cannon fire caused them to flee, saving our young nation from defeat. We enjoyed watching 4300 cadets march into the dining hall to the beat of a fife and drum corp.
Another high point was the Observation Deck of the Empire State Building, towering 86 floors above Manhattan. It was built in one year by 4,000 men during a 1939 work project after the Great Depression. Today, 30,000 people work inside the building with security guards and metal detectors every few feet. Next, we toured Rockefeller Center which is actually six skyscrapers owned by our allies (Great Britain, Germany, Spain, Italy, Japan, and France) under the flags of the League of Nations. The mylar ice rink provides skating in 74-degree weather. It was fun to tour NBC and ABC networks, see Associated Press Corps, and the home of the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes.
For the sake of brevity, I have to skip the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Guggenheim, New York Public Library, United Nations, Greenwich Village, Little Italy, Chinatown, World Yacht Cruise, two Broadway plays, and shopping at Bloomingdale's and Macy's. On our last day we had lunch at Tavern in the Green in Central Park. A two-and-a-half-mile surrey ride around Central Park costs $45 for half-an-hour. Taxis and carriages stop at Tavern in the Green which is 'over the top,' as Ursula would say. The elegance of Tiffany glass chandeliers and stained-glass windows give way to outdoor patios with hanging lanterns and topiaries of King Kong reigning over New York. All too soon, it was time to leave the Big Apple. We knew exactly what we wanted to explore further on our next trip to New York, where no one can be too thin or too rich! --Shirley Ruble