Being a goofy tourist isn’t actually that dumb after all. After recovering on Sunday from my travel travails, and going out to dinner with Steve and Anna at a rather lovely NY restaurant (with an NZ connection through Peter Gordon) I set out on Monday on the double-decker red tourist bus that circles Manhattan, and I most heartily recommend it. Despite looking the aforementioned goofy sitting up on top and gawping at the sights, it is actually a brilliant way to get one’s bearings and gain a brief overview of where what is and which places one wants to return to. The “uptown loop” is particularly good as it covers a route that you could never manage by yourself, weaving through the Upper West Side, circling the wonderful vistas of Central Park, into Harlem, and down the Upper East Side, with all the snippets of history and goss trivia thrown in. The Harlem history was particularly fascinating and some of its upmarket housing areas quite surprising, although we did briefly skirt the slum areas, and of course our bus did not venture into the badlands. The “downtown loop” connected with this and led us through the West and East Village, Chinatown, the Financial district and of course the still-haunting gap in the skyline of Ground Zero. Despite the vibrations of reconstruction, the crowds gathered around the perimeter still gaze in a respectful quiet at the minute-by-minute time-line attached along the wire barricade, illustrated with the still-shocking photos of that morning’s destruction of 9/11.
So thus oriented, and with my weekly subway pass and NY map, I was ready to set forth exploring.
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