Thursday... We're walking, we're walking...

AL!!

GOOD MORNING!!   It came around quickly today – got up about 6 to head down to the Today Show because the Brittanys have missed two of their “Magic Mike” boys on the plaza (and yesterday Channing Tatum even danced – and “Joe” showed up (!) – so today Matthew McConaughey is going to be on the show, and who knows, maybe all THREE will show up to promote the show!   

While we’re getting stuff together I check on the videos that were uploading from our encounters with Russell Harvard and Mare Winningham – and all of those videos are now up on YouTube.  You get to see Brittany interpreting for him.   We still have afterglow…   here are the links to the last two videos:

Russell Part 2: http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DRwJ8fO_Alqo%26feature%3Dyoutu.be&h=6AQH8DyeH

Mare:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr3c3oSHykA&list=UUB_rrranERwGbXr8P6oYPfw&index=1&feature=plcp

We get down to the Today Show plaza about 7ish, a little before and there are people all around the plaza, but it’s not thick with a crowd so we’re able to get right up to a barricade.   They have monitors for the show outside and the broadcast is coming over the PA system so that we can all follow along.  It’s like watching the Today show with 300 of your best friends, outside, from afar…  The other end of the plaza is lit and that’s where the cameras are for all the shots of people waving signs as they go to and come back from commercial – we’re fine where we are because we’re at the barricade and we can see what’s happening.  If we moved to that area we would be about four rows back and in a throng.  So we’re good.  

There are people walking all over inside the plaza and they have an entourage and a clipboard.  They select some people to talk to, and we think that they are people selecting who gets to be on camera to talk to Al when he comes outside.   They nearly come up to us, but I was on my phone and not paying attention, I look up and they’re nearly in my face.  We didn’t have a poster or anything so we weren’t jockeying to be picked like other people around us.  It’s not until we’re done and back in the apt with the show on that we see those same people, and they have two women that they selected for “ambush make overs”!   Dang!   I could have used one of those!  We were so close!

Al comes out at about 7:30 and he is SO SUPER NICE – he goes around the ENTIRE plaza and shakes hands and interacts with every person there.   (Video of Al is on youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WFFFdZKGp8&feature=youtu.be).  When he does his weather he’ll do the opening segment with a group of people behind him, and then while the map is being shown on screen, he moves so that another group of people can get a chance to be on camera.  We hear screams and we see Ann Curry in a bright red dress run out onto the plaza.   She talks to people in the well lit end and you can tell that she’s getting the “we’re going to miss you, you’re so great” comments from the people that she talks to.   We find out later that today is her last day and just a hour later she gives her goodbyes.  Matt Lauer comes out too and greets a few people on that end and they do a segment down there.   And then Matthew McConaughey comes out to screams, and they show him on camera saying hi to a few people (the same people that Ann was talking to – so I know where to stand if we ever go again) – but as soon as that little shot of him is done, he’s back inside.   Seems like it was all for show – but I guess he has to be back in for his interview segment.   

At the Today Show

This is our best shot of Matthew

It’s about 8ish and we’ve been there for an hour and up for 2, so we’re about done standing there, and his interview is over with no plaza theatrics, no dancing, no Joe, no Channing…    We decide to head back over the NBC store to make last minute purchases.   You can’t walk straight through the plaza, you have to go into the building, down the stairs (it goes into that huge underground city that we found the other day) and then it comes up across the street at the NBC store.    So we head down and we think we hear Al’s voice, we see big red velvet curtains with people guarding it, and we see a guy standing outside the men’s restroom… I think he’s just an attendant at first, and we go past him (looking for breakfast since we’re down here).  And then we all start talking about the guy – he had a walkie talkie.. maybe he was guarding the door for someone.   We go back and he’s gone.    So we decided that we just missed Matthew McConaughey coming out of the restroom.

Nap time!

We never find breakfast down there, but we finish our shopping and find a little place on the way back.   The girls get omelets to go and I go unconventional with pot stickers for breakfast.  I never turn down a pot sticker.   When we get back to the apt I blog and the others nap – it’s 12:30 before we head out again.   We declare that Dana is the keymaster… I am the gatekeeper… and Becki is Zuul (that’s a Ghostbuster’s reference for the pop-culturally impaired). 

BP is in charge of getting us around the subway today – she’s not really a fan of that idea, but I’m delegating.  J   We are heading to Central Park today and we have a lot on our list.  We want to rent bikes and tool around Central Park to see some places that they filmed Doctor Who recently, Literary walk, Bethesda fountain, Strawberry Fields, Bow bridge, the Castle… then at 6:00 we have tickets to the 9/11 Memorial, and we want to eat dinner at Katz’s, and then head to the Empire State Building at night.   WHEW!!

We get off the subway and almost immediately we see the people with the bike rentals.  We can get 2 hours for $20 or 3 hours for $25, and we decide that we want to take our time and piddle.  She offers a “tour” package as well where someone will ride with us and tell us where everything is.  We just want to be silly and find our own way, so we’re good on our own.  BMc is more than a little nervous about the bikes – she’s not a confident rider, and this is a big city and a busy area…we’re trying to reassure her that we’ll take care of her.  BP is kind of joking that she would take a tricycle again (like last year in Ocracoke).   It takes a while to get our bikes and they lead us to this tea place to sit and cool off while we wait.   We get the bikes and we’re off – just as I start peddling a guy on a bike rides up next to me and says that I’m the prettiest one of the bunch, “I like the big girls”…  oh my.    Later in the day BMc is approached by a flamboyant male that tells her she’s so beautiful that she could turn a gay man straight… it’s our lucky day it seems. 

Bikes seem like a good idea

We walk the bikes across the street (VERY busy) and then just start heading off in the general direction of things we want to see.  Things are not labeled at all in the park and there are tons of little paths that go off in different directions, so we’re just going in broad strokes and hoping we’ll run into something.  We have a map and two apps that are supposed to guide us through the park, but it’s a little hard to do that while you’re riding.   We’re trying to work our way from the south end of the park to the north, and so the first thing we’re looking for is called “overlook rock” and it’s something that “Doctor Who” used when they were filming here.  We saw lots of pictures of them in New York, and we found bloggers who talked about exactly where they filmed.   We come to a place where we think it might be and we start to pull into that path – but there is a big sign marking the path saying “no bikes on the paths”….  Um, what?   If we can’t bike on the paths then what are we doing with bikes??   We get off the bikes and I walk mine down to see if I can see anything.  Keep in mind, we’re looking for a ROCK.  A very specific rock, but there are TONS of rocks popping up all over the place… you’ve seen one rock, you’ve seen them all.   And we’ve seen them all.   Look, it’s a ROCK!  We decide that this isn’t going to work and we decide to move on down the road.   I’m suddenly without power – my chain has come off.   It’s easy to get back on, but it was also a well greased chain and now my hands are black with the stuff.   We catch up to the others and have a group meeting.  We can’t do this.  We’ve decided.  This isn’t practical to have the bikes if we can’t ride them in the park, you can only ride them *around* the park, and only in ONE direction (there are arrows on the paths)…  so we decide to take the bikes back (we’ve probably already gone a mile or so) and see if we can get our money back.   This isn’t going to work. 

We ride the bikes back, but we’re breaking rules – we don’t want to ride them the wrong way on the road with the arrows because we’re afraid we might cause collisions, and cars are sharing the road with the bikers… so we ride on the paths, illegally.   It’s easy to see why bikes aren’t allowed, it’s pretty congested with people and it’s hard to navigate between them.   At one point we get off and walk the bikes the rest of the way.   We are already hot and tired and we’re back to where we started.   We talk to the bike people about how we want to see the MIDDLE of the park and the things in it, not just ride AROUND it – and they say that oh yah, you have to ride around it and then walk your bikes in the middle.   Um no – I’m not walking a bike around the whole friggin park.   We honestly don’t expect to get all of our money back – but we do.  They were very nice about it.   So we road bikes in Central Park.. for free.   Look at us economizing.

Tickets...

 

 

Fun!

Ok – TAKE TWO on Central Park.   On our way back we are constantly approached about getting bikes or a pedicab around the park, and we say no, no, no, no, no… they do not take no.   By the time we leave the park even BP is crabby with them, NO!!  One guy follows us for while explaining that it’s 7 mile park and you can’t see everything on foot, and it’s not just a ride it’s a TOUR!   He says they stop in 4 places in the park for us to get off and take pictures… well, we’re going to try this on our own for now.  We want to see the middle of the park.

We walk in and just decide to walk in the general direction of the carousel, which we FIND!   We get tickets, and the ticket guy is honestly laughing at us a little – we’re the only ones riding without kids, and the other are riding beside kids because they can’t ride alone.   Everybody gets on a horse except me (Becki doesn’t like those “stirrup things”) – I take a seat in the chariot in front of their line of horses.  I’d much rather sit on a cush seat than those horses, and I don’t need to fall on my hind quarters while trying to dismount either.   We get pics (and video! Wooo!), and once we get off we get new water.  I didn’t realize until we got back that the water we bought in the park had pictures of Donald Trump on it.  The Donald is everywhere.

We head up to Poet’s Walk (or Literary Walk, or “The Mall”) – really they need to pick a name and stick to it.  This is the long tree-lined path that you see in every movie that is filmed in NYC.  Even the Glee kids did a number here.   It’s beautiful with the canopy of trees, and it gets two of its names from the statues of writers that are placed along it.   There are artists with easels set up to draw our portraits or caricatures, and there is a guy with a big sign that says “Jokes $1 – Guaranteed to Laugh!” – I kind of regret not giving him a chance.  

Poet's Walk

It’s very hot today – and sticky and gross so we rest often, drink lots of water and we enjoy walking in the shade.  With all the trees in Central Park you would think that there would be more shade than there is.   We get food from vendors – pretzel wrapped hotdogs, pretzels filled with cheese, and yummy frozen fruit pops like the Edy’s fruit pops, and then we head to our next stop, the Bethesda fountain.   This is one of favorite places in the park – you enter by going downstairs and under the street, and that takes you into a tunnel that is more like a building with mosaics on the wall, it’s really ornate – it is open ended and leads out into the plaza.   There are two guys singing for donations and selling their CDs and with the acoustics, its almost angelic.   And speaking of angels, the fountain in the center of the open plaza has a big angel.   This fountain is iconic – you’ve seen it many times in films, but the one that I find most people remember it from is “Elf” – this is the fountain that Santa flies over and loses the engine on.   To the Doctor Who fans in the group it reminds us of a weeping angel, they’re statues that are alive, and just like the ghosts in Mario games, they can only move when you aren’t looking at them – so “DON’T BLINK!  Blink and you’re DEAD.” – we wonder if the weeping angels will be coming back for the NYC episode upcoming.  

Bethesda Plaza

The restrooms in this area of the park have “short stalls” as BMc calls them – you stand up and you can see everyone, the wall only goes to about chest high.  And BM shares a moment with a lady in the stall next to her – they agree that it would be really easy to ask for toilet paper.  J

The Angel

I remember the persistent pedi-cab guy saying that he would take us to the “Friends fountain” – and I don’t know of any other fountains in the park that look like this.  It does have tiers like that fountain – but I don’t think it had an angel on top… I tell the others that this might be the Friends fountain.. but that I’ve never heard that before….  We get pictures and then we see the boat house (and many boats in the water) just on the other side of the plaza.   People are also feeding turtles that are in the water – they’re about the size of a small plate.  But then we see this MONSTER head sticking out of the water.  A huge snapping turtle about a foot and an half long – this guy could take a toe off, and he’s hungry!  This is where the loch ness monster went!  People are sitting by the water and sticking their toes in (I wouldn’t just because the water is thick and green) – but it’s so thick and green that you cannot see Nessy as soon as he puts his head under…  one lady has her feet in, and we see giant turtle tail come up out of the water and head in her direction.  We warn her that there are big snapping turtles in there and one is headed for her toes and she quickly gets them out.   We play the theme music from Jaws….

Monster Turtle

Next stop, Strawberry Fields – the area of the park dedicated to the memory of John Lennon.   It’s the first time that we really make a navigational mistake and have to double back, but we ask some nice park officials who are riding in golf carts.   We want golf carts.  We’ve gone from wanting bikes to trikes to golf carts.   They should rent them out – we would purchase.  J   At one point on our journey BMc asks if we can go to Central Perk (the coffee shop from Friends)… Becki and I tell her that’s not a real place and we chuckle (just a bit).   BM says, “You’re welcome”… if she were a character on a show, that would be her catch phrase.  We like it very much and consider making it the theme of the day.   But we’re pretty sure at this point that the theme of the day is WALKING – we’re walking, we’re walking… and we still have ambitious plans, we have Bow Bridge to see and to walk up to the Castle and go through the bramble and the duck pond… and it’s 3:30.   We have 6:00 tickets for the 9/11 memorial and it’s all the way downtown, so we need to think about leaving really quickly.  All that bike business took a lot of time out of our day – and the walking can be slow going in the heat.  Nothing is really close to anything else, it’s at least a half of a mile between each thing, probably more (it’s a 7 mile park, dontcha know)… So we alter our plans – no castle – in fact let’s just do Strawberry Fields and then back to the Bow Bridge and hit the metro downtown.  

Strawberry Fields is a quiet zone out of respect – and it’s more than just the mosaic of “Imagine” on the pathway, although that’s what most people are there to visit and get pictures of.    We head back to Bow Bridge – it’s another iconic thing in the park.   Rachel and Finn sang a song on it.. they filmed some Doctor Who on it… and we see metal plates on an area under construction with the words “Sonic” on it (he uses a sonic screwdriver) ; later when we re-check pictures of him running across the bridge, we see that the construction was still there when they filmed… maybe it’s related…  On our way to the bridge we run into another fountain – THIS is the Friends fountain, we see the lights that they turn off at the end of the opening sequence.  It’s smaller than I imagined. 

Photo opps over we find our way out of the park (long way out of the park) and we are beat.  Central Park has beat us down and we have no idea how we thought we were going to get all that done in one day.   Feet are killing us – and we are ready to sit on a cool subway train.   Very disappointing when we finally find our train, and BMC discovers that she has lost her unlimited metro pass somewhere along the way.   Very sad.  She checks and rechecks – very frustrating.   Everyone but Dana has had to buy at least one extra ride on the metro now.

Friends Fountain

 

We get down to the 9/11 Memorial stop – and we have a long walk – it’s like a maze with all the construction zones.   I wish we would have tracked the path on our gps pedometer, it was forever.  And once we find it the lines it’s still very long…but totally worth it.  The memorial is amazing.  The plaza has places to sit in the grass and reflect,  and little seating areas – Tower One is right there, and then there are the pools of water that sit in the footprints of the Twin Towers.  They are immense – it’s hard to imagine buildings in those spaces.    Chilling. 

Bow Bridge

We have lots of issues – we’re hot and tired and my brain is gone… all of us have throbbing feet, and BMc has a rash that is like a prickly heat rash that keeps spreading.    But our day is not over..  We walk back to where we got off the train (remember that looooong maze?).   We go back to St. Paul’s Chapel – it’s the chapel that sits right under the towers, that miraculously (literally) didn’t sustain damage in the attacks.  

 I’m pretty gone at this point and warn the others that I will not be of much use in the navigation or decision making process.   We’re looking for the J Train, and there are signs everywhere that say J – but there is no J entrance that we can find… We finally hit the “J train” (I love a good J-Train) and our next stop is Katz’s Deli – the deli that was featured in “When Harry Met Sally” – and the home of one pound sandwiches.  I saw it on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives and they compared the pastrami to the corned beef – and I’ve decided I want the corned beef reuben.  BMc is going to get the pastrami..  

Tower One

The South Pool

 

On the front door of the deli they have a message in memory of Nora Ephron, who wrote When Harry Met Sally, and just died of cancer the day before we go.  The table that was used in the film (the famous fake orgasm scene) is labeled with a sign above it.    You walk into the deli and they hand you a ticket which they tell you not to lose!   Every time you order something you hand them your ticket and they write on it – when you leave you give your ticket to the cashier and they tally up your bill.  The guys that are working there are great – very “New York”, very personable.  They let us sample cuts of the meat as they’re making the sandwiches… mmmmm…. I’m so happy… this is what we needed after this day.   BP and Becki get the turkey, and this is not just sliced turkey, this is like fresh out of the oven carved turkey.  So good.  Dana gets the hard salami – we love hers too.  BM and I get the pickled tomatoes in addition to the other two kinds of pickles that they give us (one kind is a regular dill pickle, and the other is cucumber but the size of a pickle and sliced like a pickle spear, we are fans)– we were told by the bartender at the Doctor Who bar to be sure to ask for the tomato too…   they’re pickled green tomatoes – quite yummy.   BP however is relieved that they gave her “real tomatoes” on her sandwich, none of that “green business”…   I do get the corned beef reuben, and BM gets the pastrami but she asks the guys how she should get it.  They say with mustard – ok, done.   I always tell BM that she’s just like Sally, she always does little special orders or additions to her orders.   For this she just “Sallied” the bread (changed to a white roll) and we asked for the tomatoes extra.. and extra pickles..  we got a fist full of pickles while others just got one of each.

I’m trying to take a group picture and I say “hey” a couple of times to get them to look at me, but everyone is zoning out, so the 3^rd time I say “HEY!” it’s pretty loud -  Becki says, “Did you just pull a "new Yorker" on me?”   My inner New Yorker!   BP says “you need to blog that, I thought she was going to pull out a little new Yorker out of her pocket”.   We do see a lot of what BMc thinks New Yorkers should be like – she sees a family that she thinks that all New York families should look like so she’s happy now that she feels she’s seen real New Yorkers. 

Becki and I get cappuccinos to end the meal and we head out…  but BP has lost her ticket!   That’s a big no-no here… the workers even have shirts that say “I found my ticket at Katz’s Deli”…   Dana has her go back and look for it, and it’s just under her tray.  Whew!!

The Diner

Pickles and tomatoes

Our own water station

Where is your ticket?

  

Time to search for the subway again – we use the google maps to navigate, but it’s not as specific as we would like.  Sometimes the map says that we’re standing right on top of the stop – but we don’t see it, so we wander about asking random people where the stop is.   Most of the time we can spot the green lamp posts that indicate there is an entrance, but there are other times (right after the WTC) that we wandered for a VERY long time.   Believe it or not, our original plan was to go to the Empire State Building after Katz’s – but that is not happening.  I can’t walk another step, we are all beat, and BM is “red all over” …  there is a lot of line walking to get to the observation deck, so we are on the train home.   We are currently pathetic.

This is where we meet our favorite crazy train person.   He stands over BM (she’s seated, and he’s holding on the bars above her and creating like a canopy over her), and I’m seated right next to her.  He just starts laughing and laughing – which makes BM start her nervous laughing.   He starts moving about the train a little and he’s making hand gestures.   We’re good with hand gestures..but we don’t understand these…  he sits next to me and BM and BP are just laughing hysterically at this point – so he’s laughing too. It’s scary.  And now he’s gesturing like he’s drawing a line between me and him, putting (imaginary) earbuds in his ears, then a “talk to the hand” gesture toward us.   When we get off the train he says, “go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go…” he says it for as long as we can hear him… yikes. 

We are at our stop – and every time we get to the 50^th street stop we manage to come out of a different exit.   Which corner will we come out this time?  It’s like a crap shoot…  I don't know, hopefully some place different.   But that I like that Rite Aid corner.  That’s pretty special when we’re able to come up that way, it means the shortest walk, and we need that at this point.  

I make a quick stop at Rite Aid to get ace bandages for my ankles – they are swollen like a pair of water balloons and I want to wrap them for the night.   We are all so happy to be back in the apt.   Straight to bed.  No blogging or logging today…  it’s the day that never ends.