We are greeted with another glorious day. Cold, seven degrees when we head out at midday, but sunny. Our plan for the day is a tour on the Upper West Side exploring the gilded age and some mansions along Riverside Drive.
Before we head out we have a quick breakfast. Yummy granola we bought yesterday. We head off around midday.
We catch the one train uptown to 79th St and walk to 83rd street to meet the tour group. We meet the tour group and Esther our guide.
Check out http://www.nyadventureclub.com for more tours like this one.
Esther starts with a brief introduction to the area, Riverside Drive and Park break the gridded design of Manhattan and met the vision of designer Frederick Law Olmsted. From 1875 until 1910 the more than 190 acres was created.
The drive and park curve their way from 72nd to 125th Street. Esther takes us on a two hour journey from 83rd to 108th street. Esther describes the buildings and grand homes of the day, most now only exist in memories and photos. As the city evolved the desire for 40 room houses and staff shifted to smaller apartment style living; the norm in NYC today. Still a few remain, today they are either schools or condos. Only one remains a family home, with a value in excess of $30M today.
The architecture and associated stories are fantastic as we wend our way to 108th Street. Along the way we also walk in Edgar Allen Poe’s footsteps, perhaps where he penned The Raven. We learn why Joan of Arc (honouring the US / French alliance) has a statue dedicated to her and see memorials to Civil War heroes, ASPCA founders and NYC firemen.
The tour took some two and a half hours. We thank Esther for the great tour, and bid her farewell.
We are pretty cold, two and a half hours walking in the sunny, yet icy conditions, has taken its toll on us. We search for somewhere for lunch, deciding on the warmth of Five Guys for a burger. We eat and thaw out for a while.
We then head back downtown and do some shopping. Quick visits to Nike, Sephora and Skechers. The streets are packed, it’s 6pm Sunday evening, it could easily be midday it’s so busy. As we walk from 51st Avenue to 45th along 5th Avenue we pass the Rockefeller Centre, where the crowd is, as Google says, “as busy as it gets”. We swarm, almost as one, along the pulsating Avenue. Skyscraper meets culture meets commerce on this electrifying stretch of real estate.
We leave the never ending stream of people at 45th and cross down to Times Square. 45th is quiet and we enjoy a reprieve for five minutes. It is as busy as it gets at Times Square. We pop into Skechers, then grab a hot chocolate before heading home.
Left overs for dinner as we rest our weary feet. Yesterday we walked 12kms, today we walked nine.
