New York, New York!

We tried to take a big bite out of the Big Apple during our recent Saturday-Tuesday visit to see our son who lives there now. We covered a lot of ground, mostly on Manhattan in the Financial District. We stayed at a Marriott property, the AC Downtown New York Hotel. It’s on Maiden Lane, just a short walk from the East River.

Since returning home, I’ve been organizing my photographs by theme, sharing some on Facebook and Instagram.

One World Trade Center (Freedom Tower)- I really wanted to see it and fortunately, at 1776 feet tall, it is visible  from all directions 

One evening we took a sunset sailboat cruise aboard the Clipper City. We sailed the waters around Manhattan, Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. I was in shutterbug heaven!

The architecture around New York is, of course, very diverse. Many shapes and forms, from older buildings like the New York Stock Exchange (right row, second from bottom) to new structures like the big shopping center across from the Freedom Tower (left row, bottom)

On Sunday and Monday we walked more than five miles each day. Along with the Financial District, we trekked through Chinatown, Greenwich Village, East Village, Tribeca and SoHo.  On Monday we took a train to Brooklyn and saw where our son lives.  

Some street scenes including the famous Wall Street bull

We enjoyed some very good dining around the Big Apple 

An unexpected pleasure was coming across the Trinity Church graveyard. It dates to the late 1830s. It has some of the oldest gravestones I've ever seen and a rich variety of the memento mori style (translation: "remember that you will die") that was popular in America in the 17th to early 19th centuries. Famous burials here include the first U.S. treasury secretary (and famous duel victim) Alexander Hamilton (middle bottom) and Robert Fulton, often called the inventor of the steamboat (right center) but the site embedded says otherwise.

Assorted other New York scenes. Washington Square Park near (or maybe it's on) the campus of New York University was a neat place to visit on a pretty day with live music, people laying out in the sun and a mini Arc de Triomphe. We saw the real thing in Paris in 2017. 

Many, many thanks and much love to Alesia and Joseph who made this trip happen and made it so fun and busy.  We had a most enjoyable dinner with my oldest brother and his wife at Trinity Place Restaurant and Bar.  

I mentioned our hotel earlier. We were on the 22nd floor of the 30 floor AC Hotel Downtown. The room was small, especially for the three of us. But the views helped make up for that. To the left could be seen the East River, which always had boats going back and forth, and to the right were views of the city's urban landscape.  

Finally, a few observations. New York, as a state, has already enacted the $15 an hour minimum wage. Signs in the subway tout that. And the state also now bans plastic straws. I like the steel straw I had at one place and the paper one at another wasn't a big deal or change either.