Mark took advantage of a fine Sunday morning to run 10km around Central Park. He was impressed with how safe and serene the park felt at that time of the morning. Just lots of dog walkers and runners out doing exactly the same as him. When he got home, we headed out to the B&H Photo/Video superstore, something I’d been wanting to see with my own eyes. It was a tad overwhelming even finding the camera area and I was very restrained not buying anything I thought. At this point, we had to make our way to a pier a few blocks up for the 2 hour harbour cruise we’d booked. Little legs again were aching, so with all the walking later in the day still to come, we opted for our first taxi cab experience of the holiday. It was cheap as chips, but saved us about 20 minutes of walking - very handy.
The cruise we picked was for 2 hours heading south past the financial district and getting up close to the Statue of Liberty before heading towards Brooklyn and up past the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges. The gentlemen who took the tour was very knowledgeable and worth listening to, though I spent most of my time out front of the boat taking photos so it wasn’t terribly easy to hear the running commentary. It was a beautiful day for the cruise with blue skies and high wispy clouds and gave us a great perspective on the city we couldn’t see from up close walking up and down the streets.
After the cruise we made a quick trip to back to the hotel to switch up some gear before catching the subway down to City Hall to make the walk over Brooklyn Bridge. I couldn’t comment on how busy it was walking over the bridge compared with a normal day, but being a super sunny and nice New York afternoon it wasn’t surprising that every man and his dog had the same idea. It was like moving against a sea of people in both directions - probably not as pleasant as it could have been but another thing to tick off the list.
Once we made it to the other side, I parted ways with Mark and the boys. They were off to the ice hockey - New York Islanders vs Ottawa Senators - it had been a big dream for Mark to attend an ice hockey game while in NYC and he managed to get super cheap tickets for the game. This meant of course they were up in the heavens miles from the pitch but an awesome atmosphere nonetheless. The evening was made even more special by Mark finally getting a photo with some NYPD officers - that in itself was amazing, but even more so when the officers pulled out real life NYPD badges and gave these to the boys to keep!
Meanwhile I was kept entertained by the lovely surrounds of photo opportunities down at Brooklyn Bridge - in the end I was here for nearly 4 hours waiting for sunset and just soaking up the last night in the Big Apple. I’d been on somewhat of a photographic mission to try and get a good New York by night shot for our bedroom wall at home - and the night didn’t disappoint. It’ll be a hard choice between some of these shots but I'm sure I have a winner amongst them.
And so ended our last full day in the city. It had been a crazy five days of full-on activity from dawn to dusk but we really felt as if we'd seen the best New York had to offer and had filled our adventure cups right to the brim.
The following day we'd be flying to Canada on our actual birthdays - my 40th and Mark's 39th!