Today was the day I headed uptown. The streets system is pretty simple here once you have it explained to you. The Avenues run north/south. There are essentially 16 Avenues D, C, B, A, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, Lexington, Park, Madison, 5th, 6th (Ave of the Americas), 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th. When you get above 59th Street on the West side 8th becomes Central Park West Ave, 9th becomes Columbus Ave, 10th becomes Amsterdam Ave and 11th becomes West End Ave. The streets run east/west and basically from 14th St upwards cross all of Manhattan. You will see them called 31st East as is the case where I'm staying. 5th Ave is the dividing line. So if you're west of 5th your street becomes west and so and and so forth. Therefore if you walk more than a block in the wrong direction you are a fool. There is one big exception to the rule and that's Broadway. It starts on 107th St and meanders slowly across the map until it almost reaches Battery Park, basically the bottom of Manhattan. Also once you get below 14th St the grid system ceases to exist so all bets are off and its time to pull out a map.
So I headed up town with a view to visiting Grand Central Station and the UN Building, both essentially on 42nd Street. I caught some nice glimpses of the Chrysler Building as well so all in all not a bad mornings walk.
You can cover a street (i.e walking from 31st to 32nd) in about a minute and an Avenue in about 3 to 4 minutes so Grand Central Station was about a twelve minute walk from the hotel so not worth getting the subway. The UN was a further ten minutes along. The security at the UN was crazy and basically if you wanted to enter you underwent airport like security. Grand Central had plenty of security of its own with uniformed, weapon carrying army members wearing camouflage fatigues scattered liberally about the building.
From there I headed to Central Park. I crossed back across 7th St (a further 25 minute walk) and caught the subway to 81st St, roughly two thirds of the way up the park. On the way to the subway I made of point of checking out times square by day and doing what I should have done on Saturday night and that's walk up the red steps and take a photo of the neon.
So the park is stunning and huge. It is 341 hectares in total. There is no way you could see it all in a day. I just meandered around and looked at what I thought was attractive. When it was time for lunch I retired to a place called The Boathouse where I met a couple of Aussies who were dining there as well. We got talking and I basically missed my plan to go to the Top of the Rock for sunset. There's always tomorrow. Anyway there are many stunning places within the park but I wont bore you with details except for one.
The object you see above is a genuine Egyptian artifact. It is nicknamed Cleopatra's Needle and was commissioned by a Pharaoh in 1450BC to celebrate 30 years of his reign. London has it's matching twin. It was moved to Alexandria in 18AD and arrived in London in the late 1870's. The park tells you it was a gift from Egypt, the other story is that a Vanderbilt purloined it and organised its current installation.
As you can see quite a number of stunning areas of both man made and natural beauty. Tomorrow I am off to see The Book of Mormon. I have spoken to numerous people who have told me it is a riot. The tickets are still hot property even after 4 years which is pretty impressive. I am also going to try and take in the 9/11 Museum and have another shot at getting to the Top of the Rock at Sunset. I may actually have to get organised.
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