Part 5: New York New York - Days 9 & 10

Ok the holiday was nearing to an end and there was so much I still hadn't seen.  I had a list of "must see's" and a list of "it would be nice if I could see it".  I aimed to cross 2 of those things off my "must see" list on Saturday by seeing the Statue of Liberty and by walking the Brooklyn Bridge.

Jo and Natalie decided to join me as well. Our first stop was B & J Fabrics which was in the Garment District....very close to the hotel.

This was similar to Mood Fabrics where everything is on bolts and you take a sample to the counter and then the whole bolt is brought to the cutting table.  They had a nice little quilting section and while prices were not cheap ($13 a yard) compared to the online stores and even some of the brick and mortar stores, they did have several OOP fabrics.  There was also a nice little section of Liberty fabrics as well.

The quilting section

Just inside the shop...

Natalie getting her fabrics cut

I was a little grossed out by this!

Or maybe some alligator? 

Fun fabrics

The most expensive fabric I found at $2000 a yard

I'll have 3 yards thanks...

And clutching our new purchases, off we headed to the subway to South Ferry Station to catch the Staten Island Ferry for free. Yes, that's right for free.  It's a ferry that operates between Manhattan and Staten Island every half hour, offers fantastic views of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island and doesn't cost a cent.  The catch is it's crowded and a bit of a free for all getting onto the ferry.  No time for stragglers as it leaves dead on time... Basically you get off at Staten Island and catch the next ferry back. They leave every half hour.

And there she is...

Manhattan in the distance and Brooklyn to the right

On the return voyage, coming back into port

The new amongst the old.

Once back on shore we then caught the subway to Brooklyn so we could visit the Brooklyn General Store which basically has yarn, fabric and notions.  It didn't look that far on the map so we decided to walk there....It was a very hot day, so not one of our best ideas! However, we did walk through some lovely streets and I would liked to have spent a bit more time exploring Brooklyn.

We were grateful for the shade these trees provided!

Loved these old brownstones

Loved how people just added a garden to their front steps.

And then we were there...

After all our traipsing Natalie was the only one who left with something! I felt I had bought enough fabric so far...Is there such a thing? We decided to carry on walking to IKEA. I had never been to an IKEA. We certainly don't have one in NZ and Natalie and Jo both felt I would be eternally deprived if I didn't get to experience IKEA! So with water bottles filled off we started again. 

Neat to see little community gardens and it felt like a nice area. However, the closer we got to the port, it began to feel a little more undesirable and quite industrial in places.  We later found out it was Red Hook that we were walking through and was considered one of the most dangerous places in the city in the 90s! Yikes!

Nearly there...

How mad is this!!!

So we caught the free shuttle back to Downtown Brooklyn and grabbed something to eat at Shake Shack before we started our walk across the bridge.

Brooklyn Borough Hall

The sun just starting to set as we start our way across the bridge 

There is always a police presence on the bridge, apparently.

The Statue of Liberty in the distance

Midtown Manhttan

The Empire State Building

One World Trade Center

We were really close to Ground Zero, so decided to go there as Natalie and Jo hadn't been there.  

Ladder 10, the fire station opposite Ground Zero. 

Flowers from the tributes on 9/11

After walking an insane amount of distance today we finally went home and crashed before our last day in NYC on Sunday.  On my "must see" list was the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Natural History Museum where "Night at the Museum" was based!  Janelle was joining us today and her preference was the AMNH, so that is what we decided to do. We caught the subway to Central Park and when we came up, there were people everywhere. It was insane. Unbeknownst to us the biggest protest march in history was about to take place on climate change.

So we battled our way through the 311, 000 people that were there to march against climate change, and finally ended up at the museum.

I loved this museum. So much to see and the dinosaurs were amazing.  I could have spent the whole day here, but already half of it had gone! Do you recognise anything from Night at the Museum??

One of my other "must sees" was Top of the Rock which is the observation at the top of the Rockefeller Center.  Unfortunately, it had been a cloudy day and when we had tried to go up earlier it was zero visibility.  It was much better now, but there was still a degree of mist around which didn't make for great photos.  Nevertheless, it was my last night here, so I didn't have any other chances to do this.  The queues moved reasonably quickly; there were security checkpoints which slowed things up, but on the whole, it took us about 20 minutes to get to the top.  The views were amazing...Manhattan views on both sides...

Looking downtown

Looking towards Brooklyn. That's the Chrysler building all lit up.

Green lights in honour of Climate week

Looking Uptown...Central Park in front

From here it was a walk back through Times Square again and back to the hotel to begin the mammoth task of packing before my flight out early the next morning...