New York - Day 3

Wednesday, the weather was a lot nicer but much colder. We planned to get up and out early but the wine (and heater in the room which went crazy in the middle of the night) made that impossible. We eventually got out at about 9, and caught the bus across to Times Square. But we hit rush hour and it took ages. So we missed the boat we were going to catch and decided to go to a diner for breakfast. We went to the Starlight diner, which doesn't seem like the best part of town, but is where most of the cops from the nearby precinct go for breakfast. The food was good (bacon, eggs and home fries - and Caroline now likes bacon!).

Caroline the vegetarian!

After that we headed for the west river to catch the water taxi. We had a New York Pass, which gives us free entry to most/all of the tourist things we did. The taxi goes from Pier 84 on the West river,  down to Battery park on the bottom tip of the island. Up to south sea port (on the west side of the brooklyn bridge - used to be a hot spot with good bars and reasonably priced food, but is currently still being rebuilt after the storm). Then alongside the Brooklyn bridge to DUMBO, and finally over near the Statue before heading back to the Pier. (You can't go over the statue as again they are still sorting it out after the storm.)
Going down the west river, the tour guide pointed out where the Titanic was supposed to dock, which is now a Golf driving range.

View of Manhattan from the water taxi

Pier where the Titanic should have docked.

Air and space museum on a destroyer.

By the Brooklyn Bridge

We go off at DUMBO in Brooklyn, which stands for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. It is supposed to be a cool area, with lots of little shops and pastry shops. We must have missed the better parts. Still we found a few shops and saw some Brooklyn and got some good views of Manhattan.

Caroline and the view from Brooklyn across to Manhattan

Manhattan from Brooklyn

Back on the taxi, we went over the the Statue of Liberty. Both of us were expecting it to be a bit bigger but we were some distance away. It was built by 2 French guys and is made of thin sheets of copper (less than the thickness of 2 pennies) over a steel frame.

Statue of liberty

Us on the water taxi

Lady Liberty

View from the taxi on the way back

After the water taxi, we headed over to Times Square and caught the tour bus along Central Park up to the American Museum of Natural History. It's the sort of place you could easy spend a whole day. But we only had a few hours so prioritized - the planetarium and the dinosaurs! Unfortunately we got there too later for the planetarium show but had a wonder around the exhibit before heading up to the 4th floor for dinosaurs!

Giant clam - plack says "don't sit in the clam!"

Giant model of mosquito - gross!

Rose Planetarium

T-Rex used in Night at the Museum

Sad dinosaur! :-(

After we headed through Central Park to get back to Rockerfellor. Our feet were killing us! The park is a lot bigger than I expected. But very pretty. The didn't build on the park, mainly because of the huge lumps of rock which cover the area. They are the same as the bedrock which anchors the skyscrapers, but in this area apparently it was too much problem to dig them up. We only see the lower lake but it is huge. I can understand why people like jogging around it.

Central park

From the bridge looking over the lake and city

Silhouette over Manhattan 

We headed for Fire Zone, but it was finished for the day (we did it the next day).
After this we were pretty pathetic, our feet were killing us, and just sat in Rockerfellor at Starbucks for a while. Anything as long as we were not standing. We still had to walk back to the hotel, where we crashed for an hour before going to nearby restaurant for Chinese and then an early night.