new york
New York is a tremendous city. We've been there several times, and need to write more about it. We've spent so much time travelling other parts of the world for the past 10 or more years, that we are neglecting our own United States. For any city on this scale, we highly recommend a guided tour such as New York in One Day! as son as possible after arrival. That gives you your bearings and ideas on what to go back to see. This tour includes a bus tour with short walks and a boat cruise to see the Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn Bridge, and Empire State Building. New York in One Day is the only bus tour in New York City that incorporates a boat cruise into the tour. Having a tour guide accompany you throughout your sightseeing dramatically improves the quality of your sightseeing experience.
Our favorite outing in world-class cities such as New York is to attend plays such as Phantom of the Opera or The Lion King on Broadway. (Same thing in London. London, actually, is a two-play-a-day city 'cause we don't want to miss anything.) We've seen Phantom of the Opera in San Francsico, London, New York, and Boston.
Whenever we visit a large city, we look for passes such as Admission to 40 of New York City's top attractions.Such passes save money . . . and a lot of time as they give you a good selection of "must-sees." We've used day passes in San Francisco (which is where we actually live, but we love touring our own city), Tokyo, Kyoto, parts of Australia and certainly in London -- nothing beats those double-decker tour busses.
We stayed at the bottom of Manhattan because of our ongoing research with family maritime history for The Maritime Heritage Project. The Seaport and Pier 17 have a rich and diverse history as profound to New York City as Wall Street, Central Park or Times Square. This cultural marketplace along the historical Lower Manhattan waterfront is a gateway to the harbor and ferries leave from here for Ellis Island.
The neighborhood offers attractions, shops and restaurants for every taste. Diverse year-round events are easily accessible by subway, car, ferry or bus. Concerts, street performers, boating, bike rentals, a farmers market, summer beach and winter celebrations abound.
This area has an annual Seaport Music Festival plus other events, especially during the warmer months. The cool breezes off of New York harbor create an ideal venue for a host of summer activities. Festivals, sporting events, walkathons, new product launches and cultural celebrations dot the calendar each and every month.
The South Street Seaport Museum was founded in the 1960s; an exacting restoration of Schermerhorn Row took place in the 1970s; Pier 17 was developed in the 1980s; and mixed-use preservation and development has been underway along Front Street in recent years.
From transatlantic shipping to immigration to New York’s rise to economic pre-eminence, New York's waterfront has played a critical role in developments that have transformed the entire city. Designated by Congress as America’s National Maritime Museum in 1998, the South Street Seaport Museum is located in a 12 square-block historic district on the East River in Lower Manhattan, the site of the original port of New York City.
The Museum is comprised of over 30,000 square feet of exhibition space and educational facilities in New York City’s largest concentration of restored early 19th-century commercial buildings. The Museum houses exhibition galleries, a working 19th-century print shop, an archaeology center, a maritime library, a craft center, a marine life conservation lab, and the largest privately-owned fleet of historic ships in the country.
The historic buildings west of the Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) Drive have stood for more than a century. East of the FDR, stands the historic Tin Building. The 1907 structure was once a thriving marketplace where the city’s fish was imported and processed. It originally stood at water’s edge, prior to the construction of the current Pier 17 building. A fire in 1995 all but destroyed the 55,000-square-foot building, leaving it vacant today, and awaiting a grand restoration.
If you're going to New York, you will surely want to see plays, the symphony, the ballet, the Giants . . . The city has it all! Best to book in advance to be sure you don't miss anything!
We also found reasonably priced accommodations in chic updated hotels along the waterfront; because it was years ago, we won't mention them here, but checking into offerings around that area is worth it.
For the kids . . .
Changes in Latitude, Changes in Attitude