New York City by Land

With the Great Kills Yacht Club on Staten Island as our home base, we traveled into the City several times. In keeping with our favorite way to see local sights we opted to take as many different modes of public transportation as possible.


We started our days by walking a little over a mile to the Staten Island Railway station for about a 25 minute to ride to the Staten Island Ferry Depot. What is most interesting about riding the Staten Island Railway is that the ride is free if one gets off at any stop before the Ferry Depot. If departing at the Depot, then a fare is charged that can be combined with the MTA subways via a transfer making the commuting cost $2.25 one way which is exceedingly reasonable when considering that there is NO charge whatsoever to ride the Staten Island Ferry.



Combine these commuting costs with the savings by staying at GKYC and we had saved enough money to spurge on a lunch at Tavern on the Green in Central Park. I can not think of any other time in my life where I have had a $100+ lunch date, but our experience at the Tavern was absolutely wonderful and definitely THE highpoint in our visit to New York. The food was excellent, the wine intoxicating, the ambiance ritzy, the service impeccable and my date was divine which made for a once in a lifetime afternoon.



Opting for another mode of transportation, a bike taxi, we rode around Central Park following our lunch. Not too far along in our tour of Central Park, we came to the Dakota located on Central Park West. Stately yet charming, this was the home to John Lennon and the movie location for Rosemary’s Baby. Of course no trip to Central Park would be complete for a Beatles fan without a visit to Strawberry Fields.





We did the totally touristy thing of taking a Double Decker Bus tour several days in a row as well. This was a wonderful way to see as much of the City as possible and our guides were all fun and informative. This allowed us the option of getting off and on as much as we liked over a 48 hour period. The places we wanted to see and visit may seem a little out of the ordinary for the mainstream tourist but where else would a Macy’s Elf want to go but to the Mother Ship in order to see the wooden escalators:





OR where a new Mac computer owner can go for cool stuff:



OR where a Deck Monkey can shop for new accessories:



OR where some entertainment can be found:



OR where there is some Ghost Busting:



OR for a light lunch:



AND we did find some regular touristy stuff as well:





You have to love the honesty of this guy:




We did not visit the Twin Towers site but chose instead to visit the fence of tiles. Thouands of handpainted tiles were created by school children to process their thoughts and feelings regarding the September 11, 2001 tragedy. A very moving tribute, this fence displays the tiles on a rotating basis