Our Amtrak experience was stupendous -- it was my husband's first time on the Northeast regional and probably my third or fourth time. It's so simple and easy to take the train. Honestly, I would take trains more often when I travel vs. planes if I had the time.
Once we arrived in New York, we were off! We did some brief sight-seeing in Midtown, but soon took the 4 or 5 express down to Bowling Green to catch a ferry over to Ellis Island. That was one of my requests since I hadn't been there in my few times to New York. [Fun fact: Suspicious packages apparently gets one stuck on Ellis Island for a short amount of time because all the ferries are evacuating people from Liberty Island, where said suspicious package is spotted. Yay! Us native DC-er's weren't actually phased too much by this and were more inconvenienced about the timing of it all -- it was lunchtime! We seriously considered taking a ferry to NJ and a PATH train back to Manhattan but alas, it all worked out.]
Skyline from the Ferry.
After we made our way back across to Manhattan, we grabbed a quick lunch and headed over to the World Trade Center and 9/11 memorials and Museum. We ended up not being able to get into the Museum due to timed tickets, but walked around the beautiful fountains they've created for each of the two former towers. From there, we walked a bit, checked out Freedom Tower and caught the A or C train back uptown to Penn Station where we had stashed our bags. [Another fun fact: if you ride Amtrak, it only costs $5 per bag + tax to stow your bag at Penn Station in NYC -- totally worth it if you ask me!]
We were staying in Brooklyn, so now we had to get back downtown on the R or N lines. Now this is where I went wrong and where the NYC subway system completely baffles me. When just looking at a New York City Subway map, I saw both lines and assumed they both stopped at our stop on 25th Street. So we got on an N train, realizing about 2 minutes into the ride, we actually needed an R train, so go off at Union Square to wait for one. Now that I look, and as the weekend progressed, I learned to actually look at the station stop and see what letter was below it before figuring out which train to take.
The other issue was there was some track work going on when we were there so were impacted by which station we could access on Saturday and Sunday...i.e. not the one closest to our hotel and instead had to walk about 11 blocks SOUTH to go uptown to Manhattan. Live and learn, I suppose.
On Saturday, we ventured south in Brooklyn to Coney Island and Brighton Beach -- how fun! It is quite a hike from even where we were staying in Brooklyn, but totally worth the time, if you have it, to see such iconic and diverse places. From there, we went back up to Manhattan on the Q line to go to the Met. Again, I think we transferred at Union Square to catch a 4, 5, or 6 to get off at the 86th Street stop. No major problems here. Again some track work was impacting stations that were not open, but other than that, we were OK on our route.
Then after an afternoon of art viewing, with an evening of Pastrami eating and visiting with old friends, we caught the 6 train back downtown for transfer back over to an R or N train to 36th Street in Brooklyn. It took some time, but we made it back to our hotel alright.
The next morning, we had an early train out of Penn so took an N train from our hotel up to 34th street/Herald Square and walked a few blocks over to the train station. Overall, I feel much more comfortable navigating the Subway in NYC -- the express vs. local trains always messed with my brain, but now they make more sense, but I'm sure unless I did it everyday, I'm always going to be double and triple checking lines and stops each time I visit there. At least now I know I could figure it out on my own and probably not end up in Queens or at LaGuardia unintentionally.
Anyway, until next time, you big concrete jungle apple.
Iconic Grand Central Station.
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