Sunday - Long Island City in Queens

So, Leena and I got off the phone I took a longer than planned shower because the hot water just felt so good, then got dressed, picked a couple of lenss and tossed the camera and a bottle of water into my backpack and out I went.

Even heading out the door I still wasn't sure what I planned to do with the afternoon, or where I planned to go.  The train ride felt slow, and I fell asleep somewhere in Brooklyn, waking up when we hit the sunshine of the Manhattan Bridge, and dozing again before the train went back underground.

I got off at 42nd Street - Times Square, then walked up 42nd to Grand Central Terminal to use the public washroom there (it's good to know where the handy public washrooms are in the city, and this is one of the nicest).  That's when I decided to take the 7 train from Grand Central under the East River to Queens and check out Long Island City, a neighborhood there with a state park, Gantry Plaza State Park I wanted to see.

Getting out of the subway station I didn't know exactly which direction to go at the intersection, so I made a guess based on the shadows from the sun, which turned out to be the right way.

The Gantry Plaza State Park is built from some old piers and industrial stuff for unloading cargo ships, but it's no longer used for that purpose.  Each of the piers has a slightly different theme, like one has a long, long bench, another has metal seats that look like a bar, another has more lounge-like wooden seating and so forth.  It's really cool!

Unfortunately, it was also really cold!  As it's on piers sticking out into the East River, there was a biting cold wind whipping down from the north and my fingers got kind of numb.

A few other people were there, but not very many.  It looked like a wedding party went there, too, for post-wedding photos, as the elderly groom was dancing and twirling the bride around, and a few bridesmaids had flashy, shiny satin dresses peeking out from under long, heavy winter coats.

I took a bunch of photos until my camera's batter ran out, then a few more with the iPhone.

A couple of the piers in the park are lined up just right so you look across the river and straight down 42nd Street in Manhattan.

Near the park are some new, modern, fancy looking high rise apartment buildings, too, that look like they could be nice to live in.

Once I was cold enough I went back to the subway station and back to Grand Central Terminal.  I out there and walked back to Times Square where I caught the subway back to Brooklyn.  It was another long subway ride, with a lot of stops, and at a couple waited for each of the parallel trains to stop and go for people to switch between them.  Some elderly woman was sketching pictures of people and showing a couple of little girls how she did it.

I got off at 45th Street, one stop before mine, and went up to 5th Avenue to get a couple of slices of pizza.  On 5th Avenue & 46th Street a couple of women stopped and asked if I could help them.  They asked "where's the Christmas Tree?" and I was puzzled and asked "tree?" and they said "the big one at Rockefeller Center?".  I explained they were in the wrong borough, that Rockefeller Center was at 5th Avenue and 40-something Street, in Manhattan, and they were in Brooklyn.  I gave them directions to get there on the subway (which is pretty easy, go down one block to 4th Avenue and both trains that stop there will go to Times Square...).

Then I got my two slices of Sicilian plain cheese and a small soda at Charlie's Pizzeria and walked back to the apartment...  Since my camera ran out of batteries I can't get the photos off it till the battery is recharged and I can turn it on...