TQ was in town for the day - I'd taken the day off & we decided to spend the afternoon playing tourist. Neither of us are big on massive crowds - we figured the weather might keep things a little quiet, so off we went to see the waterfalls - the lazy way!
Here's our boat. We're taking the half-hour one, where they don't make you shout "NEW YORK CITY!" six times before you've even left the dock.
And there's one of the waterfalls.
This boat isn't the best sightseeing boat - this is the only outdoor area. TQ & I had just missed the one before, so we got tickets to the South Street Seaport Museum & wandered around the Peking & the Ambrose, and got in line early enough that we got some seats.
Out on the river, zipping along towards the banana pier one that I see every morning. Nice view of the bridges from here. In fact this little $10 each half-hour run around the harbor is a perfect one for TQ to take - last year, we went to the Statue of Liberty on the Adirondack (the schooner I used to work on) - this little ride covers most of the other standard tourist highlights on the side of the harbor the schooner usually can't get to. Now if I could just get him out on a Hidden Harbor Tour...there you get the nonstandard nontourist highlights!
Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan side
The underside of the Manhattan Bridge. How to keep them in order? Easy, think "BMW". South to north, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Williamsburg. Fun seeing this side of the Manhattan Bridge now that I walk across it pretty often!
First close-up view of the 4 falls. This is the one I see from the train every day. Somehow it's better from up there...
The Zephyr, the fast ferry that does the hour tour, is right behind us. Lots of tour boats. Not sure whether I would have enjoyed this much in a kayak - there would've been the hassle of moving the boats, then doing the circuit would've required careful timing with the current, a few hours & a lot of traffic to dodge. Kinda glad we decided to let somebody else drive!
This one's the best one - the one under the Brooklyn Bridge. There's something about the massive masonry of the bridge that keeps you from noticing the lattice of piping quite so much...
I mean there, that's pretty cool, right?
The next one's just sort of randomly parked among the Brooklyn piers - again, not quite as neat. Here, the framing of the picture makes you look at it - with the whole panorama of the harbor & the river around you, though, it looks a little lost...
a little more vista...
Lousy picture, but it's my old schooner so it's beautiful to me!
And here's the next & last one, next to the ferry at Governor's Island. Again, I like this one a lot better -
They just work better against a more interesting backdrop, where they can be more an element of the scene, instead of being asked to hold the viewer's attention all by themselves (ooh, listen to Ms. Art Critic...)
last view of the Brooklyn one as we head back to the Seaport.
We still had some time before the museum closed so we wandered a bit more -
went inside to see the galleries - I especially wanted TQ to see "Around the Horn", a fantastic old b&w movie shot in the 1930's on board the Peking, which we'd just been visiting. Plenty of other nice stuff too - we were still quite engrossed in the ocean liner cutaways when the lights went out & it was time to go!
Continuing in the tourist theme, we wandered on around the Battery up to the Merchant Marine Memorial --
Then back down south for a fabulously touristy dinner at Battery Gardens. Expensive, but I did enjoy dinner, the wait staff was lovely even though we were wearing shorts & t-shirts & looking a little windblown after our boat ride, and the view was great. There's the Staten Island Ferry & the Pioneer (we didn't quite sort things out right to go for a ride, but I figure we can save that for another time). The only gamble was that there was a private party so outside was the only option - but the gamble paid off, the rain held off until we were back on the subway to Brooklyn.
Again, the schooner Pioneer.
And one last shot of the Governor's Island waterfall - we wrapped up the evening with a ride on the Staten Island Ferry. We were very tired, we were very merry...we only went back and forth once, though, and we were way too stuffed for fruit! Wonderful ride back to Manhattan - the storm that had held off through dinner was approaching, the sky flickering with lightning, and there were fireworks somewhere south of Pier 40, looking all soft & misty in the hazy air. The storm caught up with us by the time we got back to Brooklyn, and we were drenched & laughing by the time we got back to my place. Funny how even when we didn't kayak, the bathroom still wound up draped in wet clothing! All in all, though, a wonderful day of playing tourist.
