After grabbing some sweet and flaky Spanish pastries from a bakery on Dykman, we traveled via subway from the tip top of the borough to the very bottom, the Bowling Green station in Battery Park, to stand on line awhile for ferry tickets to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.
I now know that in order to go up into the Statue, you need to reserve tickets in advance, because there weren’t any available. Fortunately, we were more interested in Ellis Island, so we didn’t even get off the first ferry stop at the Statue (although we took many photos, including of Lady Liberty’s be-robed ass), then departed at the Island stop.
We spent awhile at Ellis Island, poring over the exhibits, which go into every detail of immigrant life, covering who they were and where they were from, why they came to America (typically to join family already here or to get a job and make some money), what they ate, what they brought with them, the battery of medical and mental examinations they were put through, as well as careful consideration of their value to American society—quite often, the diseased, potential beggars and contract laborers were barred.
For lunch, I tried to locate the Cowgirl Hall of Fame (where Joe and I ate and had a rowdy time at almost exactly a year ago), but got lost and coincidentally ended up across the street from the Corner Bistro, an oldschool bar/burger shack in the Village I’ve been meaning to try. After a brief wait on line, during which we quaffed McSoreley’s Dark Ale, we got a booth in the back and ordered our Bistro Burgers, which come with bacon, American cheese, a slice of raw white onion, lettuce and tomato, served without pretense on a small paper plate. The shoestring fries were good, too.
After we were informed that a police investigation uptown was severely delaying our 1 train, we instead walked over to the A, during which time I pointed out Jimi’s old apartment and the various sex paraphernalia shops on West 4th Street. Uptown, we rushed through St. Patrick’s Cathedral because there was a service in session, then walked to Rockefeller Center where there were already folks ice skating. The giant Christmas tree is up, too, although it’s mostly shielded from view before its lighting on the 30th. After poking around the NBC gift shop, we went to the Top of the Rock in a glass-topped elevator, on which is projected a brief audio-visual show and through which you can see various theatrical colored lights bouncing around the elevator shaft.
At the top are some great views north and south, particularly of the Empire State Building. If you stare at the skyscraper long enough, you can see the camera flashes of tourists from that building’s observation deck, just as they certainly could see our own flashes. During the day, the view north would be a spectacular one of the entirety of Central Park, but at night, it’s a large, mostly dark rectangle. We also determined you can only see a sliver of Times Square, because surrounding skyscrapers block the view.
Coincidentally, sort of, we ran into a class from the school Joe teaches at, which was wrapping up its multi-day bus tour of the city. Joe was kind to take a group photo of the students, standing on the observation deck one story up from the kids to get an all-inclusive top-down view.
For dinner, we met up with Andie for an Italian dinner at the Upper West Side neighborhood-favorite, Celeste, topped by one of their famous ten-cheese tasting plates. Mmm-mmm, good!
Corner Bistro
- 331 W. 4th St. (at Jane Street)
- (212) 242-9502
- Meal 31 of 52: two mugs of McSorley’s Dark Ale ($2.00 each) and a Bistro Burger ($6.00).