The Final Day

It was a half day, actually. Our flight left in the late afternoon, so we had to start on our way to the airport just after mid-day. We emerged from our hotel at a sensible hour and jumped on the train to Harlem, getting off north of Central Park by 15 blocks.
Although not like what you might be tempted to think, I'd still be a little paranoid walking around Harlem at night. One of the first things I noticed was the distinct lack of coffee shops. Not that I cared, as I don't drink coffee, but it perhaps points to the lower income and lack of tourism that this area has. On the flip side, that makes it a bit more of an authentic experience. It's actually a bit like the neighborhood in Winnipeg I grew up in 20 years ago - there are pockets of nice streets mixed in with streets that need a bit of work. It did provide us with our first look at some nice brownstone buildings, which have so much character to them.

Anyway, we could have got off right at the park but I wanted to try and find the wall of fame which is a legendary legal wall in East Harlem with some mighty fine graffiti. (See it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQ1RHOGGUxk&feature=related) The only snag was that I didn't have the address with me. I thought I had a rough idea where it was, but as it turns out, I didn't. We were actually far closer to it about an hour later, but we'll catch it next time around.

Central Park is big. We all know that, but it's bigger than you think. I'm not sure that it's big enough to give you the impression that you're out in the country, but I think that's mostly just because the rest of NYC is big enough to always be seen (there are parts that are nicely tucked away, as seen below, but for the most part the city looms large in the background).

We walked the length of the park without straying east or west, but given the time, there are many great neighborhoods on either side that we would have liked to explore. We did stop at the Guggenheim long enough to snap a few pictures and wished that we had left enough time to check out it's contents, then continued on past some of the marathon route that would be in use just a day later, and through the little tunnels that are in so many movies. There were enough people playing the saxophone (I think each tunnel had a token musician playing at one end) to always be within earshot of a bit of jazz.

A few well manicured gardens, football games, and horse-drawn carriages later, we reached the bottom of the park and melted into a rather ritzy shopping district where Myra happened to find a reasonable sweater. We had nearly left NYC without anything decent having been purchased for Myra, if you can believe it. The store had about ten staff wandering around trying to look busy, and one person on the till. I guess we didn't smell of enough money.

We were well tired by this time, and were caring less and less about seeing anything else. We just wanted to be able to sit down and not have to get up for a while. We made our way back to the hotel to pick up our luggage and then to where we were dropped off five days prior (Penn Station), and stood around for what seemed an eternity (probably 15 minutes) for our train to Newark airport to arrive.

At the airport we were told that the flight had been overbooked, and asked it we wanted to volunteer to take the next flight in the morning. They would have taken us to a hotel and put us up for the night, free dinner, and the kicker was two free tickets for anywhere Virgin flies in the US which would be good for the next 12 months. Sounds like a good deal, right? We'd be stupid not to take it, but we passed. People get a bit irrational when they're tired. We were done. In our minds our trip had ended and we just wanted to get home. We also didn't want to get home at midnight the next day and get up at 6:30 to go to work properly jet-lagged. In hindsight, perhaps it would have been worth it, but no point crying over spilt milk.

The flight was uneventful, and much of the next day was spent grocery shopping and being tired. We were both tired for the next two weeks, actually, but it was a fantastic trip, and, for me anyways, tops the list of places visited (Italy being a very close second).

Our next adventure is in the planning stages for this July, the details of which will emerge shortly. Can't wait!