New York City

Oct 23
Friday

Driving the 80 miles to the Liberty Harbor RV Park in Jersey City went smoothly until I was almost thru the George Washington Bridge and Gypsy quit on me. Just froze up with the route still on the screen but nothing moving, in very heavy traffic.  Got off at the first opportunity and tried unplugging, etc. but she wasn't having it.  She was taking time off, and I couldn't blame her as she has been on the job every day all day, since June with  not one day off.    Poor thing!

It was 1pm with only 3 hours before the RV park office closed and I was still 30 miles away in the heaviest traffic around NYC and Jersey. Got driving directions from Google but didn't know how to make it talk to me so wrote it out by hand.  An attempt to follow written directions on freeways with many exits only lasted 2 miles and I was lost again.  Decided to try Gypsy again and she worked!  I didn't get mad at her, only told her welcome back (and don't do that again).  That night Bobbie gave me a tutorial on how to have Google talk directions to me.

Jersey City is just across the Hudson River from Manhattan, and Liberty Harbor RV park is, like Philadelphia's park, without ambiance but lots of convenience.

  Car commuters also park here and take the ferry into NYC. I explored the mildly seedy neighborhood around the park and spent the evening planning tomorrow in the Big Apple.

With only two days  here, I took a bus tour of the city first to orient myself.

Being the first pickup stop at the RV park, I got the best seat on the bus right in the front by the big window for excellent photo ops.

First stop,  Statue of Liberty.

No, I didn't get out and go up.

Don't like heights.

Lots of sights on every block our local guide, Christy, told us about.

A bonus was listening to our driver, Dave from Joisey, curse the other drivers just loud enough for me to hear. Especially the "idiot Uber drivers" who don't know how to drive offensively.  According to him if you only drive defensively in Manhattan traffic you are a danger. 

Watching the traffic up close as I was, I believe he was right.

The timid ones cause the traffic problems.

Now there are more Uber cars than the 13,000 cabs and business is down 60% for the cabs.
They aren't happy.

Got off the bus many times:

for a walk in Times Square,
 looking for the naked cowboy,
 but it must have been his day off

a walk in Central Park

thru John Lennon's Memorial
Strawberry Fields

with a busker performing some of John's songs for us.
He was very good.
If you closed your eyes you could almost Imagine it was him.

Amazing outcroppings of rocks all thru Central Park.

Rockefeller Center is smaller than it seems on the Today Show.

Like the Trevi Fountain in Rome.

Visited St. Paul's Cathedral

lunch in Greenwich Village at a good burrito place

World Trade Center
Ground Zero Memorial

The butterfly wing building is the new subway station entrance that was also destroyed.

On the site of each of the twin towers there is a square with waterfalls that pours into an opening in the center to symbolize infinity.

No one knows how deep the hole is.

In all there will eventually be six new buildings on the site.
This is the Triangle.

Day Two

My head was swimming with all I had seen yesterday, but I still had two places on my list to visit on my second and last day in NYC.

Took the 8:30a.m. ferry across the Hudson River with the rest of the commuters.

Off at Pier 11, I had intended to get on the Hop on/off bus, but a map told me it would be better to walk the 8 blocks to the Brooklyn Bridge while I was in the neighborhood.

So I did, passing this graveyard where Alexander Hamilton is buried, fittingly near Wall Street, since he was our first Secretary of the Treasury.  Love there is a graveyard near Wall Street to remind the movers and shakers of their mortality.

Yesterday and today I noticed so many New York women walking with big purses and lots of jewelry, very unconcerned about being robbed.
Is that a myth perpetrated by small town folk?



I decided to be a local and just went with my cross body bag and didn't meet one threatening person all day.

My theory holds that 99.9% of the people in the world are good.



You see so much on foot when your eye is moving slower.
Wait, am I in England again?!

Arriving at my destination I walk the pedestrian path in the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge, a lifelong dream of mine.

And another dream is realized, that of finally taking a pretty good selfie.

The bridge path is divided into pedestrian and bike lanes so you have to be careful or you could end up on someone's handlebars!

Now on the hop on/off bus I am getting frustrated because it is taking 45 minutes to go 8 blocks in this traffic.

So I get off near Times Square and walk the last 20 short blocks along 5th Avenue to the Met.
So much for using the hop on/off bus as a taxi!
Take a short detour into Central Park to sit and pretend to be a New Yorker.

Arriving at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it is already almost 2 p.m. and I must get back to Pier 11 for the ferry to NJ before dark.

Inside I'm asked at the ticket counter how much I want to pay. What a concept. Pay what you want. Since I had only 2 hours to see the museum I thought $10 was a fair price for the $16 ticket. Great!

Spent the time wandering thru the galleries, and sitting for a rest to contemplate the meaning and trying to understand some of the art in the Contemporary exhibit.

Outside on the steps I join the crowd for a bite of lunch from the hot dog vendor as I people watch and wait for the hop on/off bus to take me back to Pier 11.

This was a first.
 A juggler with a dog on his head in Chelsea.

Back on the ferry to Jersey City after a wonderful day on my own in New York City.
It's a great big friendly (really) city with lots to see and do.

I will be back to do some evening things when I come back to stay in the city, some theater, maybe see Woody Allen play his clarinet at the Carlysle Hotel on Monday nights.......
I love New York!!!!

Mark Twain and Kate Hepburn - Connecticut

Oct 22
Thursday

More than a few times I enter a sort of trance while driving and found myself over the border in Connecticut.  These winding twisting endlessly scenic roads can do that to you.

Glad to be in New England to see the fall color and get some relief from large states that take forever to get out of. Here they are very tiny.  Connecticut is only 80 miles across. Rhode Island is smaller than London.

Connecticut puts on a final curtain call of color.

Brilliant foliage in a palette of red, orange, gold, yellow and russet.

I begin to hear a noise coming from the back of the Doodle.  WTF?!   Did I close all the cabinet doors?  Is something loose and ratting?   I slow down to 50 and it goes away.

No photos allowed inside. Darn.

Finally in Hartford to see Mark Twain's home.

After some success as a writer Samuel Clemens married Olivia and they settled here to raise their family in 1874.

Here he wrote seven of his most famous works including the Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn stories.

He and Livy designed and built the 11,000 sq foot,  25 room home to meet the needs of their growing family of three daughters. Sadly, while they were in Europe on speaking tours, their daughter Suzy died of spinal meningitis in 1896.  After that it was too hard for Livy to continue to live in the house so it was sold in 1903 and the Clemens spent most of the rest of their lives in Europe.

This may be my quirkiest celeb sighting yet, 

a Lego Mark Twain.

Trying not to break his arm off as I'd never be able to reattach it.

Just across the lawn from the Clemens is the home of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin.

As a noted abolitionist, she and Sam spent many evenings together entertaining friends like Frederick Douglas.



When Harriet Beecher Stowe met Abraham Lincoln in 1862, he is said to have exclaimed, "So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war!"   I don't believe he was being condescending to Harriet with his "little" remark as she was only 5 feet tall. She spent the last 23 years of her life here.

Back on the road in Connecticut, that darn sound is not going away.
Will check it out soon.

In Old Saybrook, Connecticut, I am on the trail of my favorite actress, Katherine Hepburn.

,

Spent the night here in this 1746 B&B,
 The Deacon Timothy Pratt.

The living room had scrapbooks of local history for my sleuthing.

My room had been the room of the first woman pharmacist in Connecticut in the late 1800s.

When I get home I will move the antique bedroom set from the guest room into my bedroom.

It felt sacrilegious to open my laptop here.

Kate's family lived here in this coastal community of Old Saybrook since the early 1900s.

So she came back here to retire and could often be seen riding her bicycle around town, here buying a new broom and groceries at Walt's.

Walt's is still here, but not Kate.

I wandered in and bought some cheese.

The townsfolk said she was always charming, even while putting out a get lost sign.
Note the "please".







A small museum dedicated to Kate gave many insights into the life of this interesting and very beautiful woman.
   

Leaving Connecticut, that noise is still a bother. Checking at a repair shop it turns out to be yet another bad tire, this time on the left side rear opposite the flat tire a few weeks ago. Even my daughters knew I should have had them both changed at the time. Wonder why the first repair shop didn't suggest it?!

 

The fall colors make everything seem beautiful, even things that aren't.

Cape Cod

October 17
Tuesday

Had the oil changed in the Doodle, then drove the short distance to Cape Cod, checking in at the Old Chatham Road RV park right on the Cape.  Turns out there are four RV parks on this island which I thought would be terribly expensive. Their rates are no more than on the mainland, ($40)

but of course this is off-season now. 

 Before settling in for the night, took a pretty drive up a winding highway to see Province Town, or P-Town as the locals know it. Altho it was 4pm, the quaint little village was buzzing with so many  people there was no place to park except at a lot that was $20 for the day. I had only an hour to look around and refused to pay $20 to do it.

 So drove thru the narrow winding streets with cars on my bumper the entire way, vowing to come back to see this art community on the water at the end of the arm that is Cape Cod.
A Jack Kerouac hangout, P-Town still draws artists and free spirits.
I will return for my yearly spree of Bohemianism.

The next day, on the way to the ferry at Hyannis Port, I took scenic hwy 6A which meanders thru the prettiest Cape Cod villages, one of which is Denis. Here the Cape Playhouse has been putting on summer theater since 1927.

Basil Rathbone was one of the early performers.

Bette Davis began her career here as an usher, and Humphrey Bogart, Henry Fonda, and Gregory Peck all honed their skills here before taking Hollywood by storm.

Already a superstar in the 50s, Tallulah Bankhead arrived, pet leopards in tow, for her engagements here.

Back in the days before air conditioning, Broadway closed for the summer, so casts survived by touring vacation venues like these. The actors stayed in rooms rented out by the locals.

Before boarding the shuttle to the ferry to Nantucket, I had to check out 100 Marcant St, which according to Google was the address of the Kennedy compound. 

The lane was marked "private" so I didn't proceed. A workman nearby assured me that was the correct address at the end of the lane but the compound can't be seen from here.

The Kennedy's no longer own the property as it went to Ted after Rose died and to his widow when Ted died in 2009. She gave it to the Edward M. Kennedy Institute and it will eventually be open to the public. I'll be back.

On the ferry ride over I learned

you may bring your car to Nantucket but the fare is a steep $400 round trip to discourage it.

The island is so small there's really no place to drive anyway.

  

I wandered around the village taking pictures of the quaint shops, many already closed for the season which seems to have ended mid-October, only a few days ago.

The streets are quaintly cobblestoned; everything in these small villages is quaint. But it's an artificial quaintness, too perfect, put there for tourists. What locals would want signs in Old English hanging on perfect wood plaques over doors?
It would be refreshing to see something tacky, something real, like a Dairy Queen.

There were only a handful of people in town, and altho crowds can be no fun, it would have been nice to see a few more people.

Where were the teenagers walking around
 eating ice cream cones?

 Lunch was at the BYB pub by the wharf,
 the liveliest place in town with 9 customers.

My corn and lobster fritters, $14, were an appetizer
 but the four big balls of goodness were all I could eat.

My server LeAnn who is a local, filled me in on Nantucket history and told me not to miss the lighthouse.

Also not wanting to miss my ferry, I hired a cab for $5
 for the drive out to the beach.

There are actually three lighthouses on Nantucket.
All intended to keep the whaling boats from crashing into shore.

Brant Point Lighthouse has been on this spot since 1757 in one form or another.

The first one made of wood burned down, probably the lighthouse keeper fell asleep?

This one was built in 1901 of brick. Duh.

Once back to Hyannis on the ferry, as I was leaving town I passed this restaurant,

The Egg and I.

 

Remember the book and movie

from the early 50s ?

The next day I did Martha's Vineyard.

 

This ferry leaves from Wood's Hole, which is Falmouth.

Sort of an overcast morning but warmer than the last few days,

 a brisk 55 degrees.

Martha'sVineyard is 23 by 9 miles,

 4 times the size of Nantucket and is home to six villages.

It's big enough to hide out on and small enough to do everything you want in a few days.

That's why celebrities like Bill Clinton and Barack O'Bama come here for R & R.

Vineyard Haven where the ferry docks, is the largest of the Villages.

But the most interesting village is 4 miles away at Oak Bluffs.

 I took a cab to check out the neighborhood of Victorian cottages, all painted in bright colors and trim as if trying to outdo each other.

All the gables, turrets and balconies with lacy designs and scrollwork were enough to give Frank Lloyd Wright a stroke.

 The cottages surround a park which still houses a structure where originally Methodist revival meetings were held in the 1860s.

Worshipers lived in tents while here for revivals.

From 1867 to 1872 a flurry of building saw most of the 300 small gingerbread cottages built.

When the whaling industry began to die out the area became a vacation destination.

They weren't all tiny cottages. 

This one is US Grant's summer home.

This fellow feeding the gulls kept us entertained on the ferry ride back to Wood's Hole.