USA - Canada - Mexico 2016 - Day 19

Reload page?

Saturday, 24 September 2016 -- Sight-seeing in New York

Short story today, they say a picture speaks a thousand words anyway.

Woke up to heavy rain early but it cleared by breakfast but was a cool day. Took the bus into New York with a ticket to ride the Hop on/Hop off bus on various routes around the city. Took the Spot with me for a bit of fun, didn't work all that successfully, either because of the tall buildings or the way I was carrying it in the back pack on the floor. You get the idea though and by missing a few points you can't see how many u-turns we made while trying to walk around using very small maps with many of the streets unnamed.

Therese enjoyed the day taking in all the sights and smells of the city. Sorry, I missed the point I think. I found it a very dirty city, very poor quality roads, poor signage as usual making it difficult for an old country boy to find his way around. I actually started asking people why every street was named "One Way" as that was the only sign easily spotted on each street at intersections. Every second block had partial closures due to building construction, road repairs or some services repairs. Plays havoc with traffic flows but not as much as the Fed Ex driver who was just stopped in the middle of the one way street, trolleys sitting on the road while he sorted through the packages. Our bus went on the right hand side and cars went down the left side.

Must be a fun place to drive, no quarter asked or given. Apparently it is normal to just pull out in front of someone and expect them not to run into you, but to let you cut in. Surprising number of vehicles with a big rubber protection flap hanging on the rear bumper. Nudges must also be as popular as blowing the horn.

We toured most of the city sights and dropped of at various points to walk through interesting places like Times Square, Battery Park and Central Park. Makes it a bit difficult though to catch the bus again when the route details don't quite line up with the actual pick-up points.

Almost missed, well we actually did miss the bus back to the motel by a couple of minutes but they called it back for us. We were to meet the bus no later than 8:30pm. We were told by the company that the night tour started at 6:00pm and went for an hour and a half. We went to where the guide said to go but it was the wrong place. The agent there said no, it was back where we had come from and would go for two hours. Due to traffic, it actually went for two and a half hours and it took us about three minutes of running to get to where the bus wasn't. Had to apologise to the driver and other passengers.

Hopefully tomorrow will go OK as we will attempt to see the rest and try the hop on/ hop off ferry as well.

0 klms today, total to date 7052 klms.