The Empire State

For any world traveller, a visit to Manhattan is a must. And I always appreciate short visits to “the” City, so after fixing up my bike, and while waiting for Roel’s parts from Europe, we headed for the Big Apple.  

I have no idea why people complain about having difficulty finding parking in Manhattan!

I will admit that I was terrified to drive my bike through New York traffic. Sitting in a cab in NY traffic can make me anxious if I pay too much attention, so I was not looking forward to riding through the busy streets of Manhattan. 

 We planned our trip so that we would drive through the city on a Sunday morning, so as to avoid the Monday – Saturday constant rush hour.We arrived in the city by 8am and the streets were, by NY standards, empty. We saw the Statue of Liberty from Battery Park, the Empire State Building, Times Square and rode around Central Park before heading through the Holland Tunnel to get to Jersey City, New Jersey to get a view of the Manhattan skyline.

Empty Sky Memorial, Jersey City, New Jersey

 We grabbed lunch at a legit Jersey diner (a must-do for Roel's first visit to NJ) and then we headed back into Manhattan to meet up with my Mom who had flown up from Florida to host us in the city with her fiance. By this time, the drivers of New York had arisen and the streets were packed. It wasn’t a problem at all, though. Roel and I acted as a team, blocking lanes for one another and wedging ourselves between cabs to get where we needed to go.

Lady Liberty from Jersey City, New Jersey

We grabbed lunch at a legit Jersey diner (a must-do for Roel's first visit to NJ) and then we headed back into Manhattan to meet up with my Mom who had flown up from Florida to host us in the city with her fiance. By this time, the drivers of New York had arisen and the streets were packed. It wasn’t a problem at all, though. Roel and I acted as a team, blocking lanes for one another and wedging ourselves between cabs to get where we needed to go. Quite a rush! And now, after having driven a car through New York AND a motorcycle through New York, I would hands down do it on a motorcycle a hundred times before I would do it in a car again.

We parked the bikes in a secure lot just outside of the city and spent four days living quite high on the hog. 

Empire State of Mind

 The apartment we stayed in is on Central Park South, a few Avenues from Colombus Circle, a 10-minute walk to Broadway and only a couple of blocks to any subway line to take you anywhere in the city.We toured the Statue of Liberty, the 9/11 Memorial in Lower Manhattan, the Museum of Natural History and ran through Central Park.

Touristing with Mom

We introduced Roel to B&H Photo, Bloomingdale’s and Broadway, taking in The Phantom of the Opera and Chicago. It was wonderful to spend time with my Mom, again, and we both really enjoyed being tourists with Roel – seeing New York through the eyes of someone seeing it for the first time really brought the magic back into touring through the City for us. All in all, it was a fairy-tale week as far as visits to NY go.

The night before we left, we decided to bring the bikes back into the city to get some shots of the bike going through Times Square, which is really so much more impressive by night. The energy riding through Times Square at night was electric and I have to say it was fun to be a part of the spectacle.

Rawr

Times Square by night