New York - city to fall in love with

In New York we spent six hot days at the end of June/beginning of July. Six days is not enough for that city. Maybe 66 or 666 days would do, although we're not so sure. It's a place that can be overwhelming and tiring in the beginning but afterwards it makes you fall in love with it and doesn't want to let you go.

We stayed those six days at Helen's at Staten Island. Helen loves New York and she enjoys living in Staten Island but still she became a snowbird. Like a few million of residents of "North" when it gets colder she packs her suitcases and heads to Florida. Tempting idea for when we get older. If we do that some day, maybe we'll buy Toyota Prius too, because as Michael - Helen's partner - told us, with this car you can drive all the way to Florida stopping just once at gas station and spending only for 65 USD. We are afraid to calculate how much we paid going with Eddie south from Chicago to Florida...

Our place at Staten Island

Another great thing about New York is that once we got there with our jeep, we could forget about it for few days. We finally started using public transportation. We didn't make it in San Francisco, we didn't in Seattle, we finally did in New York. Maybe Staten Island is not Manhattan or Brooklyn, it doesn't have its own subway, there is only a train along its east coast, but within walking distance from Helen's home, just passed the zoo (almost like at home) we had a bus to free ferry. 20 minutes by bus, 25 minutes by free ferry and we're in Manhattan.

At the ferry, on our way to Manhattan

Staten Island is not the best address in New York. Our friend from New York said we should take a free ferry to Staten Island as there is a great view to Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and Manhattan skyline and said the only drawback is that ... it goes to Staten Island. Helen noticed that we'd be a curiosity on the bus, being probably the only "white faces". In fact we were, and even if sometimes there were some other ones they were usually of some immigrants from our part of the world.

View from the ferry

But we liked Staten Island. Of course, we'd love to live one day on Upper West Side or somewhere else in Manhattan but from Staten Island to the heart of New York the distance is pretty much the same as from Brodno, part of Warsaw we spent most of our lives at, to Warsaw downtown. Of course in American cities ethnic diversity usually means higher crime rate and lower standards, but Staten Island is far from suburbs of  Detroit or S Halsted and W 77th in Chicago. New York has been a safe place to live for years now. And we wouldn't mind living here, even on Staten Island.

Before we tell you what we've seen in New York, few words about some more practical aspects. Being in this huge city with kids you have to realize it's not always going to be easy. At Helen's kids let us sleep late (mostly because they were exhausted), so we had late starts. We'd get up around 9, breakfast, making bottles for Kalina and making sure we have enough diapers etc., preparing some snacks for Maciek, and by 11-12 we were ready to go. Our bus to the ferry usually was quite empty at this time of the day so we could sit on a bus and we didn't have to fold a stroller. 

Ferry leaves every 15 minutes during rush hours and every half an hour at other times. Usually there are not too many people. It gets crowded by the entrance but it's mostly because there are lots of tourists who want to get the best place to see Statue of Liberty. For a seat with no view you don't have to push your way through.

Central Park

One of the first times we took the ferry, Ola said she didn't feel secure with so many people around. To make the feeling worse/better there was a lot of police both at the terminal and on the ferry. But it wasn't Polish police - young, inexperienced, sometimes offensive guys, it was Italian police, nice, corpulent guys smiling to our kids and friendly responding to any question. They looked like straight from the movies,  like an ideal type of Italian policeman from New York. It was a pleasure to look at them.

Empire State Building

When we would finally get to lower Manhattan it was usually around 1 pm. As we wrote before we focused more on heartbeat of the city, rather than on must-see places, so we just walked and walked and walked. We tried not to forget about eating (we did it many times in past). But we won't write too much about our culinary adventures, as they weren't so good. Tom, our New Yorker friend recommended us a few places we should eat at but somehow we ended up not going to any of them.

At least we can share some of his suggestions with you. At Bleecker and 6th street is Joe's Pizza, one of the best slice in New York, therefore pretty close to the best in the world. Hot dogs? Greys Papaya, locations at 6th avenue between 8th and 9th Street and 72nd and Amsterdam.

Times Square

Usually after 6-7 hours of strolling around we would realize it's getting late and we have a long way to go. On the first day we made it to 8 pm ferry, second day it was 8.30, one day we made it as late as 9 or 9.30, which meant we had to wake up Helen just before 11 pm to let us in. After a week of New York walking we felt almost like zombies. Happy zombies but not fully satisfied.

We hadn't seen a few places we really wanted to see. And it's all hurricane Sandy's fault. We didn't go to Statue of Liberty as it was still being fixed, they opened it on 4th of July, just after we left. Ellis Island will probably be reopened next year. Enterprise shuttle was reopened on 10th of July, the day we left USA. We really wanted to visit some museums but we got only to one and only for a few hours - Museum of Natural History. We will come here some day for museums only, for like 2 weeks straight, maybe when kids will appreciate them more. 

Statua Wolności

To be honest in all our walking we just made it to upper sides. We've seen lower Manhattan, a bit of Brooklyn, Upper West Side, plus we went to Long Island, so we still have a lot to see. Besides trip to Long Isladn, where we took our jeep (spending 15 USD for bridge toll and getting stuck in Sunday traffic) we walked and used public transportation only. We bought a weekly pass (30 USD) which paid off. Single fare is 2,5 USD, and that includes one change, but we used subway a few times a day sometimes, just to go a station or two.

New York subway

One more thing about subway, for those who travel with a stroller. New York subway, as most of all old metro systems (like London for example) is not very stroller-friendly. Elevators are not popular and usually they don't go all the way to the street level, stairs are narrow and one person carrying stroller blocks those who go the opposite direction. When you enter a station you should tell the person in charge there that you're getting in with a child, swipe your card and then a person in charge unlocks the gate. Practically we decided to do it on our own quickly (after all how long can you wait for a group of Japanese tourists to buy their tickets, ask about route, etc) and one of us would go a regular way and the other would open a gate from the inside. This would set the alarm off but parents don't care.

Maybe it's a good way to scare off people with kids so they don't go by subway. We haven't seen too many people with kids (comparing to Warsaw) in public transportation. But after we got to Manhattan ad we could walk 2-3 stations or take a subway we'd usually take a walk. Carrying a stroller, getting through crowds, setting off the alarm, it was all not worth such a short trip.

On the bus on Staten Island we didn't have to fold a stroller. Only one time, when we were getting back, it was really late and pretty crowded, driver told us to fold the stroller which meant picking up half-asleep Kalina, holding half-crying Maciek, unpacking the stroller to fold it, making sure the things we unpacked don't get lost... That didn't make us happy after 10-hour-walk...

Did you watch "Friends"?

For culinary adventures we simply didn't have enough time, too bad, we hope we'll make it up some day. This time once we were getting rally hungry we'd stop just anywhere to eat. Once we stopped at a deli buffet which ended up being one of the most expensive meals we had in States. The cheapest option was food carts, we got tempted by some snacks for a dollar in China Town and they were pretty good. We also ate in not very good restaurant in Little Italy and in a place owned by Greek, where menu was as thick as "War and Peace" as we read in a review hanging on the wall, cut out from paper 20 years ago.  

Our most interesting culinary adventure was Shake Shack in Madison Park, just by Fifth Avenue with Flatiron view, which in our opinion is the most beautiful building in New York. It's a burger place with people lining for a hundred meters or more. There are two windows, the second one is for ordering beverages, so you can stand in burger line drinking beer.

Flatiron Building

Shake Shack is not cheap, burgers start at 5 USD (on the other hand it's just as much as we lately paid in Warsaw), beer unfortunately is much more expensive than in Warsaw. Shake Shack is in Madison Park since 2004 and it became one of the symbols of New York. On one of episodes of "How I Met Your Mother" Lily says she can't go to Italy as they just opened new Shake Shack around the corner. And we don't think it was product placement.

Line to Shake Shack

Ok, so this was a short introduction and in next post we'll finally write what we saw in New York.