Labor Day Weekend

 

    I spent a lovely day with one of my nieces.  She had good news so we celebrated by taking a bus tour of New York.  Yep! We were one of  those tourists who ride in those red open top buses you see around the City. She is such a joy. There are so many young people who would have thought my idea was silly or corny, but not her.  We passed through Little Italy, the financial district, SoHo, Greenwich Village, etc. We had a really lovely time, in spite of  logistical type problems, all my fault :-(    We used City Sights NY www.citysightsny.com Would definately use them again. Grey Line http://www.coachusa.com/newyorksightseeing/  is better known, however, their buses were very crowded.

We had bought the ticket that pretty-much takes you everywhere, the problems was there was not enough time to do it all in one. This was a 48 hour riding pass.  Early 4:30 A.M. or so, the next morning I made a decision to get back to the City and take the Harlem tour ( have always wanted to see Striver's Row) or take the cruise around Manhattan. Since I was not quite sure where to get the bus for the uptown tour I walked down to 12th and 42 St. to get to the harbor for the cruise. Oh my goodness what a trial. I had no idea so many people would be at the pier. How about $4 for a back of popcorn? Small kernels, no butter. I ate a lot of junk food and met a lovely couple from Atlanta. They told me that they had heard that there was a casino somewhere in New Jersey--it took aminutes to understand that they meant casino filled Atlantic City :-) The wife wanted to do everything, as she was boarding the boat I heard her say, "look at all of those people on that boat, I want to do that next". She was talking about the Intrepid just a hop and skip away from the cruise area. I had to smile--she had the right idea about vacation.  Not sure if hubby felt that way (smiling)

I did not tell my niece my plans for returning to New York because when I went to bed I had no such plans. I am glad that I did this spur of the moment thing. But for some reason I was totally exhausted when I returned home. Instead of  working on my column, I fell asleep. Perhaps it was being on the water with the sun and fresh air. At first, I thought the cruise was sort of dull until I went to the first level and stood out in the open area. That was incredible. The sun was shining and bouncing off the water, the buildings were gleaming, everyone was so excited (me too). How wonderful to see the Statute of Liberty so up close and personal. I had not done  that since grammar school.  I will do this again.