Forrest and I bolted out of bed Saturday morning, armed ourselves with our touristy belongings, and set off for a day in mid-town. Our first stop was Rockefeller Center, which I really wanted to see, but Forrest had never heard of. Typical.
We entered the main square to see the Parade of Flags and sunken gardens, which are flooded and turned into an ice-skating rink in the winter. I pulled Forrest into the Lego Store which overlooks the square and tried, with no luck, to convince him that I couldn’t leave New York without a Lego hobbit key-chain or The Battle of Helms Deep. I left the store empty-handed and very sad.
We entered Rockefeller Center and awkwardly stood around for a while… attempting to decide if the guards would stop us from entering the escalators to the lower levels. We decided to take a chance and slipped away while the guard was distracted. It didn’t matter. I hadn’t realized, in all my pre-trip planning, that there are several floors underneath the building which are devoted to shopping. We pressed our noses up to several shop windows before spotting a woman with an intriguing bag: M&M World. Determined to find it, we re-surfaced from the underground mall and entered the NBC store to ask for directions, then set off for our second trip to Times Square.
We crammed ourselves into the revolving doors of M&M World and were ambushed by the most heavenly smell in the world. You really can’t go wrong with three floors of chocolate. We dashed about, admiring the floor-to-ceiling M&M displays, which feature just about every type and color of M&M’s ever made.
Our next stop was the U.S.S. Intrepid, an aircraft carrier which was launched in 1943 and decommissioned in 1974. As with Trinity Church, I knew about this aircraft carrier due to National Treasure. Unfortunately, it was not in my guidebook and I had neglected to map its location prior to leaving Missoula. We walked in the general direction of New York’s piers and eventually found ourselves in front of three very large cruise ships. Confused, we walked a length of sidewalk before settling down to eat some M&M’s and discuss our game plan. Forrest noticed several kayakers on the Hudson River and decided to ask the owners of the kayaking depot for directions. He came running back and informed me that, while the Intrepid was located on the other side of the cruise ships, we could kayak the Hudson for free.
We donned life-jackets and slid our kayaks into the water, overjoyed to be out of our tennis-shoes and gliding across the river. From my perch on the Hudson, I remembered, for the first time since arriving in Manhattan, that the city is an island… an island of skyscrapers. We played around in the kayaks for an hour before returning to shore. where we thanked the kayak volunteers profusely, and took off in the opposite direction.
Forrest bought our tickets to the Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum and we boarded the Growler, the only American strategic missile submarine open to the public. I got very claustrophobic. We then walked around to the front of the Intrepid, where two of the steel tritons from the World Trade Center serve a small memorial. Boarding the Intrepid, we were greeted with a large display of military aircraft and Forrest impressed me with his knowledge of high-speed airplanes. He was excited to see a Blackbird, which he correctly categorized as a mach 3 (3 times the speed of sound) before looking at the captions. I was excited when he looked over the edge of the Intrepid and commented on the clarity of the river, to which I responded, quoting National Treasure: “Sir, it’s the Hudson. Nothing is visible.”
After searching the area for a stairway up to High Line Park, Forrest and I found ourselves two stories above the streets of New York on a wooden pathway surrounded by grass and spotted with trees. We walked the extent of High Line, which was built in the tracks of an abandoned railroad, and watched as the sun set over the river. As the lonely tones of a saxophone started playing below us, I rested my head on Forrest’s shoulder and willed the city to wake from its daily slumber.
“New York is like a permanent short circuit, sputtering and sparking up into the night sky all night long.” Cornell Woolrich.
Graffiti from High Line Park
Planets and Pebbles 