NY Adventures

Fantastic voyage

There's an insane amount to do in Manhattan, so to suggest leaving not only the city, but the state may seem crackbrained. It's certainly worth your while though, because for a handful of loose change you can see Manhattan from a very different point of view.

From the subway at the World Trade Center site, it's a short amble to the similarly named World Financial Center in Battery City Park. White collar workers idle away their lunch hour under the endless glaze of the Winter Garden, an eye-widening public atrium. There's an indulgence of restaurants here - fatten up on the all-American menu at PJ Clarke's or dine outdoors at SouthWest NY on both the food and view across the Hudson River.

The NY Waterway taxis are moments away, ferrying commuters around the boroughs and across the Hudson to New Jersey. The shortest trip takes you to Jersey City (and a nearby PATH train station to return you to downtown Manhattan), or board a longer voyage up the Hudson to Port Imperial at West New York.

Are you sitting comfortably? Well stop it immediately and turn around, you're missing everything.

The pandemonium of Manhattan's architecture jostling for attention is both jaw-slackening and overwhelming. Your eyes struggle to process the scope and detail, staggered by the volume of brick and steel and colour.

From the grandeur and gluttony of downtown's towers of power, to the more sedate skyline of Greenwich village and Chelsea, before the tumbling razzle dazzle of Midtown, dominated by the Empire State Building - never has New York looked so serene, or so chaotic.

NY Waterway
$4.50 adults, 10 trip multi-fare ticket $42.75
http://www.nywaterway.com/

Everybody do the dinosaur

Rarely do you walk into a store and become embodied by the spirit of Doug McClure hamming up a preposterous Edgar Rice Burroughs based screenplay. In fact the reference is so convoluted, it’s probably never happened to you.

Nestled in a long, narrow building on SoHo’s well-worn Spring Street, it’s easy to pass by Evolution without discovering the extraordinary contents within.