New York New York 24 to the 29 th April 2013

25 April 2013

Our first Day  in NY, so we had breakfast at the Pizza place since they served a type of Egg McMuffin for lack of a better description and their coffee was drinkable. Our first plan of attack was to check out the " Hop-ON HOP-OFF "  Bus tours and go to their main office which was near Time Square as we had a 2 day (48 hour ) pass.  But it had to be activated at the main office. The pass is good up until the last minute of the 48 th  hours but if you are on a tour when it runs out you can complete the tour.

However, we walked from our Hotel for about 200 feet to the corner of 45 St and 5 th Ave and Low and Behold ,  there was a Tour Bus Rep ( how lucky for us ) but of course he wanted to sell us a Tour Ticket.  Once we showed him our Tour Pass he was very helpful in directing us to the main office. We later found out that there was a Tour Bus rep on every corner within 5 blocks of Time Square and I think there was 4 different  Tour Operations.

After lining up for about 20 minutes we finally got our Tour Passes activated and the clerk was most helpful. We decide to grab a Tour right away and it just happen to be the Downtown tour which lasted 2 hours if you stayed on to complete the trip. When this tour reached the Boat Tour Pier we got off and decided to take  the 1 hour Harbor Cruise which  got very close the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island , ( which was the holding area for Immigrates in the early 1900's), and then we cruise down to the Famous Brooklyn Bridge and Manhattan Bridge. The tour was conducted with a "Canned " description of the area but also most informative.

After the Boat Cruise we boarded the Downtown Bus Tour  and completed the rest of the that tour. Then we grabbed the Uptown Tour ( also 2 hours in duration ). These tour have some " Canned " descriptions but two of the tours where conducted by a person and I must say they seemed knowledgeable; not that I know much about the history on New York. The guide gave us information on all the important bldg. and sites but what really caught my attend was the NYC has 5 Boroughs and that 2.5 Million people come into the main city core every day to work. Also all Power line and utilities are underground hence no unsightly wires etc. However, many of the utilities were affected when the hurricane "Sandie " filled the underground with water.

By this time we needed a "Pit Stop" so we checked into MacDonald's because Mac's always welcome anyone who needs their facilities. However, I was amazed when I had to line up because they only had a "one holer" for Men and the same for the Ladies. But they had about 20 counter Servers which seemed odd for a place with one bathroom ( Rest Room ) . Yes , we bought a coffee !!!

We then walk over to Time Square to check out the Discount Tickets for a Broadway show. Several shows have tickets on sale for 30 to 50% at 3 PM for the 7 PM show. They have people available to brief you on the show so we decided on the Jersey Boys and there was only 5 people ahead of me so I got two tickets for 90.00 . Since it was now about 6 PM and we were about 1 1/2 blocks from the Theatre we decided to walk over and find the theatre. It was not as far we thought but we did some window shopping along the way. When we got to the Theatre they were letting people in so we went and finished our coffee. Our tickets were in the Balcony but the seats were good and I'm sure there was not a bad seat in the theatre. The show was great and I personally like it as the best of the 4 shows we seen.

After the Show we returned to Mac's to grab a snack because had not eaten all day ( except for a hot dog from a street Vendor ) . Also Mac's has free WiFi and we thought we should advise our Kids that we were safe and enjoying the " Big Apple " . Our Hotel " The Roosevelt" was a short 10 minute walk so we walk home and were glad to get off our feet as it was somewhere around 11:30 so it was a long day. Incidentally, I would not recommend the Roosevelt Hotel.  There has to be a better Hotel closer to the " Maddening Crowd ".
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