Tuesday 16th – One Last Look at Manhattan

Ok, so on writing this I now know that this probably wasn’t going to have been my last trip into Manhattan, but I’ll come to that in a bit.
So for once (possibly the first time since I’ve been here!), we got a morning train into Manhattan, arriving just before midday. We’d already decided on seeing Brooklyn Bridge, so we got the subway south to as near as we could get to the bridge, before getting off and walking through a typical Manhattan-Chinatown-downtown suburb type bit to get to the river that separates Manhattan and Brooklyn. It turned out that we’d actually ended up at Williamsburg Bridge, so we walked down the peninsular towards Manhattan Bridge and Brookyln Bridge. It wasn’t a particularly momentus occasion seeing the bridge, but it was quite cool none-the-less. I would have walked across it, except that I was knakered from walking by this point and had to fit in a couple of extra stops during the day.

Anahaita and Dave went off to go shopping so that I could see the next item on my list, Grand Central Station. Like the bridge, I couldn’t explain why I wanted to see it, except that it was one of these places that I’d seen in movies and wanted to experience first hand. It was quite a cool experience too, as I got off the subway I walked down a corridor, that whilst it’s decorated in the same fashion as the Grand Central that I’d seen on TV plenty of times, it was very small and claustrophobic – not at all what I’d expected.
Then, as I rounded a corner wandering if I was ever going to find the place I was looking for, the space I was in opened right out and turned into the familiar sight of Grand Central. That place is perfectly symmetrical, the two photos below are of opposite ends of the terminal.

After the station, I set off in hope of finding the final few presents I wanted to buy for people back home. Sadly though, despite having been smothered by tourist shops every time I’d been into NYC previous to this occasion, it took me the best part of 45 minutes to find one this time to buy my last bits of tat to give to my mates.
The rest of the day involved yet more subway trips (I covered the length of manhattan four times that day!), a meal at Ruby Tuesdays and then one final movie. I was pretty happy at the end of the day that I’d had a pretty good last day out in NYC, and was happy that I’d done pretty much everything I wanted to in the city.

That was until today, when I found out that Bloc Party are going to be playing a free gig on Thursday. It’s on a first come first served basis, and I intend to be both of these. That would be awesome.