Wednesday in NYC is brought to you by the letter S. I couldn't have planned that better if I tried...and I love to plan. We all slept in, and after a Starbucks (I'm just getting going...), we headed out for breakfast, which turned into lunch as it was just after noon. We headed up to Grand Central Station and found a cafe directly across from the 42nd Street entrance called Pershing Square. Overpriced and full of business people, the food was actually not bad and the service pleasant enough. No rave review but if you are hungry and not on a strict budget, its a satisfying choice. Continuing along 42nd Street, we almost walked the entire length of it to the western edge of Manhattan. Along the waterfront a few streets up we found the Intrepid - an aircraft carrier anchored in the harbour, now serving as the Sea, Air and Space Museum. A bit of a line up to get in, it was well worth the wait to visit and both kids said it was one of the highlights of New York City. The ship, if standing upright, is almost as tall as the Chrysler Building. You can tour the Hangar, where they used to store the aircrafts and have interactive displays for both the space and air programs. The flight deck features many older aircrafts and helicopters, and most impressively - the Space Shuttle Enterprise protected in a huge indoor golf like bubble. We headed straight for the Space Shuttle, and after a short wait, were standing beside/underneath the coolest mode of transportation ever. Even standing along side it, it's awe inspiring. It's roped off, and with the wheels down, makes it impossible to touch, but you can walk around it and pose for a picture right in front of the nose of it. We carried on our tour, and walked out along the flight deck, before heading down to the ground again to check out the British Airways Concorde parked along side the aircraft carrier. Much smaller than I imagined it would be (although it was directly beside an aircraft carrier...so maybe not the best way to show off any size), the only way to see the inside of the Concorde was to pay an extra $22 each on top of the $30 to get into the Intrepid, and have a personalized tour. It was already late in the day, so we skipped the Concorde tour for this trip and flagged down a taxi that took us to our final "must see" destination in NYC for the week - Strawberry Fields.
Our taxi driver let us out just south of the Dakota - the apartment overlooking Central Park where John Lennon was shot and Yoko Ono still resides. We walked around the entire building, and was surprised there was no memorial, or even a sign stating it was the Dakota. Only 2 doormen wearing Dakota on their hats gave any clue to the identity of the building. Directly across the street is the entrance into Central Park, and a path leading to Strawberry Fields. A large stone circle with the word Imagine lays in the middle of the pathway, and red roses left by an unknown fan rest just above it. A cello player performed a soft slow version of Eleanor Rigby - helping to set the tone for this simple yet touching memorial for a great artist.
Hungry again for a snack after all the sightseeing, we strolled up to 78th and Columbus a few blocks north of the Dakota, and found another Shake Shack. The line up this time was just out the door, so we tried our luck, and found a line up inside just for shakes that was empty! A few minutes later we were all enjoying a delicious shake and able to take shelter from the few raindrops that had started to fall. The rain lasted as long as a New York minute, and we hailed a taxi back to our hotel for a rest.
Even though tonight is our last night in NYC, we are all beat and decided on a local diner for dinner - Scotty's on Lexington, just south of 40th Street. Another wonderful recommendation from our front desk staff at the Seton Hotel, we enjoyed some traditional American classics such as burgers and fries, and meatloaf with gravy. Followed up by the best peanut butter pie ever created, we left our last dinner in NYC happily stuffed. An early start tomorrow, we head back home to Toronto. We found 5 days to be a perfect amount of time to spend exploring New York City - enough time to be exhausted, but still leaving us with so much more we want to come back to.
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