Cruisin in NYC - Day 4

Back here I talked about how we started Day 4 by walking the park.  That took up a good part of the morning.  We just had time to find a place to grab some wraps for lunch and take the subway down to 42nd and walk the 6 long blocks to Pier 83 for our Circle Line boat cruise. 

Side note: not sure that these pictures are actually in order of how we saw them.

There are a few different Circle Line Cruise options.  We opted for the 2 hour semi-circle cruise.  You start at 42nd Street at 12th Avenue and go down around the island of Manhattan all the way to 42nd on the other side of the island and then turn around and go back.  It's a super neat way to see Manhattan from a perspective that you wouldn't normally see it.  And the announcer on the boat tells you about a lot of cool facts about the city.

Pretty sure the picture below is in a few movies, but you don't usually see it from this perspective.  It's the only driving range in the city, and because they can't make it wider, they built up and have 4 different levels that you can drive balls from.   

The Empire State Building from the Hudson

The only picture of Ryan and I together in New York.  Taken by Me.  Not that fantastic but at least I got the statue in the background!

 This is where the towers used to be, going up on either side of that green dome.

This is the new tower that is being built.  The roof will be the same height as the old tower, but the spire on the top will make the building taller.



Wall Street

The Chrysler Building



Apparently the first sign made with "neon"



The Brooklyn Bridge





Ellis Island



The cruise was great, despite the wind.  Then we got on a city bus.  Our first and only bus of the trip.  It said it was a cross town 42nd Street bus, so we figured it wouldn't get us too lost.  We took it back to 5th Avenue and walked up to Rockefeller Center for Top of the Rock.  It was about 3:30 by this point, on a Tuesday, and apparently that is the time to do Top of the Rock! We did have a pass that got us a line bypass, but there was no line to bypass anyways.  We basically went right up.  It was a pretty clear day, which made the view really amazing.



This was our last big tourist activity before our flight back home, but it was only about 4:30 and we didn't have to go to the subway to get back to the airport until about 7:30.  So we went back to Times Square and found this amazing pizza place called John's Pizza.  It was similar to Grimaldi's.  Funny how you justify pizza twice when you are on vacation!  After dinner we went over to Cold Stone Creamery and got some ice cream.  I love Coldstone, but it is another vacation treat.  It's also easy to justify junk food when you have walked for miles and miles in the last four days.  After that it was pretty much time to go back.  The good thing about New York is that as amazing as it is, and as much fun as we had, it is so exhausting that its actually kind of nice to get home and get back to normal. 

And just in case you missed them, the other New York posts are here, here, here and here.  So check 'em out!