Today we started with the Hop on Hop off bus, a double deck (open) bus where you can hop on and off everywhere. There is a red and blue route, red goes down-town, and the blue..indeed, uptown. We started with the down-town route. We hopped on near our hotel and cruised through the streets of New York.
In the recent days, our starting point has often been Time Square. Today we’ve learned a new fact.
If a new building is put down or something is rebuilt, the construction will be extra weighted.
Because huge digital billboards are hung on most buildings, this sounds logical in itself
But I never realized :)
In the afternoon there are huge rows of people at the central cash registers for broadway musicals. Theaters then sell the 'empty seats', often at greatly reduced prices (-50%). You almost think that there are only Dutch tourists. ;) ...
Rockefeller Center
After the red bus we took of course the blue one , uptown. This brought us to Rockefeller Center, a center with its observation deck "Top of Rock". We planned to visit Top of Rock at nigh to view New York by Night from a great height. They say that this view is more beautiful than the view from The Empire State Building. Around the Rockefeller Center the NBC studios houses
where several shows are recorded, including The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fellon, NBC news and more shows.
Harlem
The bus also drove through the Harlem district, named after the Dutch city of Haarlem. We drive along Amsterdam Avenue, direction Harlem.
What supprised me was the difference in shops and buildings compared to other neighborhoods, many African American hair salons and shops with electronics and mobile phones. The people on the street are also 99% African American. Here we also saw the (from TV) famous neighborhood basketball fields where the local youth was playing. Of course the bus also drove by the world-famous Appolo Theater. The theater where all the great rythm & blues and soul legends have played. The Appolo was a bit old glory, but boy did I like it to see it in real life..Old James Brown albums "James Brown live at the Appolo", just recorded there and we just drove past it:) .... Very cool.
There must be a lot of religious people in Harlem who can not get along with each other or so .... The number (mainly Baptist) Churches was huge. It will be very quiet on the streets on Sundays I think .... Staphorst but then different;)
Hudson River area
Many artists live in the area near the Hudson River in their living space. They pay $ 200
per month for an apartment, the only criteria is that you can show that you are really fully engaged with the practice of art. You will understand, given the average cost of 2 to 2.5 thousand dollars a month for one student apartment, that these apartments are very popular. Years ago the area around the hudson river was very criminal and mainly dominated by prostitution and drug trafficking. Mayor Giuliani has made sure that the neighborhood was refurbished and became safe again for the New Yorkers. You can now do all kinds of sports, Golfing (driving range) hockey, football and a real Trapeze school, but most importantly ... it's safe.
Yesterday the boys in Central Park saw a pond with Radiographic boats, it seemed great to sail with them, so today we went back. Nice detail is that in several movies and series these boats have been shown, like in Sex in the City and Stuart Little .... Now my little ones (: P) can be added to the list.
Top of Rock
At night we went back in time towards Rockefeller center for the 'climbing' of Top of Rock. On top of the Rockefeller center. First a bite to eat, we went for the Mac .... Honestly, I have never experienced such bad MacDonalds, what a dirty mess and I think they were forgotten to bake the BigMac and had the burgers and cheese smashed on the roll. But well, this is America, the land of unlimited possibilities, so you have to give people at MacDonald also the opportunity to experiment with new rolls or ways to meet the demand more quickly;) ... We had finished eating quite quickly and had some time to kill before we could go upstairs, so we headed to the NBC studio shop and went to explore Rockefeller center. My sons wanted to have a look at the only Nintendo store in the world and of course play a game. In the shop we saw a girl of about 16 who went all out with Pokémon merchandise. Bags full, cap on, t-shirt and keycord with pokemons. I looked the other way to suppress a loud laughter.
There were a lot of people around Rockefeller Center and at once we saw why. The football team of Bayren Munchen were in the states for their summer tour and they had chosen exactly this night to visit Rockefeller Center.
Sam was photographed with one of his friends again and then it was almost time that we could go upstairs with the elevator. There were still rows of people but they could only buy a ticket for the next day (s), tonight it was "sold out". We first went up two floors with a lift, where all our stuff was checked and taken by an X-ray machine before we could continue. It was almost a disney attraction, from one queue to another. Once in the elevator we were fired to the 67th floor with an animation on the ceiling and a view of the elevator shaft. Very well done. At the top, the view was breathtaking, ... You could walk around and view New York from above. Esther did not like it much, it was on the 69th and 70th floor, and yes ... that's very high. I shot some nice pictures ..... I loved it.
It was an impressive and busy day....again....loved it...