The July Fourth holiday meant a four-day weekend for me, so I decided to visit my good friends M and J, who live in New York City with their daughter, J2. I've been to the city enough that I've seen the regular tourist stuff like the Statue if Liberty and the Empire State building, so I decided to let the "free or very cheap" lists guide me this time.
The very best activity was a tour of the Grand Central Terminal, telling the history of the building when it was a beautiful, turn-of-the century train station, which fell into dirty disrepair as the car replaced trains, and it was used by the homeless and full of crime. It was almost torn down on the 70's, when the case to remove its landmark status went all the way to the Supreme Court. Recently they spent millions of dollars to remove the decades of accumulated cigarette tar and make it beautiful and profitable again.
Today I took J's recommendation to experience the quintissential summer New Yorker summer excursion and went to Coney Island. It was fun to see the beach and amusement parks made famous in the first half of the previous century, although I made a serious tactical error in not eating before I arrived. For the record, there are NO vegetables in Coney Island.
The next neighborhood over, Brighton Beach, is known as a Russian enclave. I had an excellent dinner of Georgian cheese bread and beet salad, and now I'm enjoying a enormous German beer at a bar while the other patrons watch soccer. Alas, I can't tell who is playing because I don't read Cyrillic.
I am really glad I visited.
3 comments:
It sounds like a great visit: with M,J, J2 as well as the city. Glad you found food in the Russian section.
I love NYC, though I think a/I am in the majority of people, and b/ I have not been in ages!
I have not been to NYC in decades!
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