Last day in New York

Yesterday I spent the day with Tina and Joe. Tina I met at the pubcrawl the other night and Joe I met on a train between Chicago and Denver and he has since arrived in New York. We had a fun filled day, starting with a visit to Liberty Island and Ellis Island.

Ellis Island is really intresting. It is the place where almost all immigrants to the US from Europe and the Carribean between 1894 and 1924 ended up being processed before being allowed entry. There is a museum there now. The museum was unexpectedly huge and we ended up spending a good portion of the afternoon there seeing it.

Once back on Manhattan we went to the East Village to pay a visit to McSorley's Old Ale House. Open since 1854 there are old photographs and newspapers on the wall from various world events that have occured since that time. There is sawdust on the floor, and the barmen, who are old irishmen, are carry like 10 beers in each hand at once, so they make a big display of bringing your drinks to you. There is no drinks list. You order a beer and get 'a light and a dark', one ale and one porter, the both of them for $4.50.

After that we had pizza, and then went to some deli which apparently does the best chessecake in NYC. We had desert there, but you should have seen the sandwiches they made. We are talking sandwiches which stand up off the plate, more than I ever imagined was possible. The walls of this place were full of signed photographs of celebrities who had visited, dropped by in their limos for the most famous sandwiches and cheesecake in New York.

Once darkness fell we went down to Times Square, one last time. We sat there watching the people and the signs for like 2 hours.

An ad for Mama Mia on Times Square.

There is plenty left to do in New York. I gave up trying to do everything a few days ago because I was getting demoralized. You could spend years exploring this city and probably still not see everything it has to offer. I had a great time here but I ended up with a long list of things to do here on my next visit.

Today I'm catching 3 connecting suburban commuter trains to Philadelphia. It is an unconventional way of getting there, but much cheaper than Amtrak. It will cost me less than $15 but will take around 3 hours. Amtrak would only take a bit over an hour.