Our Blog - New York City

As most of you probably know, we've been to New York City many times, and so have done most of the top tourist attractions. This time, we had a couple days in the city on our way back to France, and so we did a few things that we hadn't done before along with a few things that we do every time.

One thing that we try to do every time is a walk through Central Park. After a subway ride up, we set out from the South-West corner and walked up through a set of the park. As we entered, we became one of the estimated 42 million visitors annually! We stopped to take a few pictures at the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis reservoir and you can see the twin towers of the The San Remo apartment building in the background. The reservoir covers 106 acres and was completed in 1862. It was decommissioned as an active reservoir in 1993 after being deemed obsolete and it was renamed in 1994 for Jackie Kennedy Onassis because she enjoyed jogging in the area.

The Bethesda Fountain, also known as the Angel of the Waters Fountain, is one of the largest fountains in New York. It has a neoclassical sculpture of an 8-foot tall bronze angel standing above four small cherubim who represent health, purity, temperance, and peace.

Throughout the park there are various sculptures, this one showing a group of bears.

Another thing that we hadn't done before was actually take a sightseeing boat tour and this year seemed to be the "year of the boat tours". As we headed past Jersey City, NJ, we got a peek at the Colgate clock. It has a 50 feet diameter and marks where the Colgate-Palmolive headquarters USED to be before it left the area in 1985. The current Colgate Clock was built in 1924 to replace an earlier clock designed by Colgate engineer Warren Davey, which was constructed by the Seth Thomas Clock Company for Colgate's centennial in 1906.

No NYC blog is complete without at least a picture or two of the Statue of Liberty.

And then some pictures of the city from the boat, looking back to Manhattan.

These I thought were rather cool ... and I had to take time to go look up what exactly it is! From the boat, it looks like a bunch of white tulips. But in fact, it is an entertainment area called Little Island. It was an initiative to help rehabilitate Pier 54, that got damaged by Hurricane Sandy. The official name is Little Island @Pier55 and it is an artificial island park covering 2.4 acres supported by 132 pot-shaped structures (in fact, called "tulips") which sit on top of 280 concrete pilings. There is an amphitheater there as well as places for kids to play. It only opened in May 2021 and we didn't have time to go there this time, so we've added it to our "next time in town" list.

The last couple pictures are of the Empire State Building as seen through a gap between a few skyscrapers, with the Vessel in the foreground. We climbed through the Vessel last time we were in NYC, but it is temporarily closed due to a few people committing suicide by jumping off the sculpture.