11/9/21-11/11/21
I drove back to Kentucky in a day to switch out the van for my own car. The trusty steed held together for those 14,000 miles and Ryan is now working on a song about the van! It was great spending time with family, once I had a negative COVID test since my allergies were acting up, and driving back into my hometown was quite refreshing. I ran some errands on my second day home and then finished cleaning up the remnants of my van set-up.
11/12/21
This was a long traveling day so not a lot of interesting things happened. Most interesting was when I stopped to get gas and then got on the interstate only to have my engine oil light come on so I had to pull off again to fill it up. Otherwise it was a nice drive and I arrived without feeling too tired.
11/13/21
Today was an extremely full day. Jason and I ended up walking over 26,000 steps! It began with a quick breakfast of a bagel and a banana before being dropped off at the bus terminal to ride into the city. We arrived in roughly 20 minutes from boarding and popped out into the midst of New York, New York. We made our way to Time Square to soak in the scene before continuing on to Rockefeller Center. When we arrived we were surprised to a see a crowd of people and quickly realized that the crowd was watching the Christmas Tree being placed for the Christmas season. We watched the process for a while before moving on to St. Patrick's Cathedral. It was nice to see a beautiful cathedral in an American setting since I had only seen cathedrals on that scale in Europe. From St. Patrick's we went to
Central Park and took a walk through the beautiful fall leaves. We found a childhood idol of mine, Balto, in statue form and then made our way to the Subway. From there we took a ride further downtown and got off to explore the Strand Bookstore. Jason, myself included, is a big fan of books so we spent a good amount of time soaking in the atmosphere and appreciating the fellow book lovers there. From The Strand we made our way back to the Subway and rode to the Brooklyn Bridge stop where we walked to the bridge. From there we connected with our scheduled ferry trip on the southside of Manhattan to go see the Statue of Liberty! While we were standing in line to board the ferry there were dark storm clouds gathering over New Jersey and heading our way. We witnessed some lightning
before finally boarding the ferry. While crossing the Hudson the rain wall hit and brought hail too. Luckily the ferry had an indoor seating area and we were all able to stay dry and avoid the harsh weather. we finally made it to the Statue of Liberty Island which has also been on my list for a long time and it was awesome standing at the foot of Lady Liberty. We explored the museum to learn more about the process of building the statue and then took the ferry back across to New York. Once we made it back we stopped by the 9/11 memorial to pay our respects and to take in the somber atmosphere. It is a beautiful memorial and I highly recommend spending time there if you make it to New York. From the memorial we hopped back on the subway and then got off at 34th street. We quickly saw the Empire State building before making it back to the bus station to make it home for the night. The day was a long one but a great one too.
11/14/21
Today was a nice Sunday in New York city. We left for church around 8:30am so that we would have enough time to get into the city and find parking before the service started at 10:00am. We were lucky to find a space, after 30 minutes of looking, about two blocks from the church. We were at a stop light and saw a car pull out of a space and then we all waited with anticipation for the light to turn green so we could go snag it...thankfully we were able to. The church service was quite pleasant and I never thought that I would be attending a service in the middle of New York city. After the service I used Jason's families membership to The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) to explore the exhibits and displays. I found a room that had a multitude of Van Gogh paintings, who is one of my favorites
and I spent a great deal of time appreciating the works. I then made my way to the Art of Native America: The Charles and Valerie Diker Collection exhibit. The pieces were beautiful nd I discovered a new artist, which is now one of my favorites, Jules Tavernier. He captured a lot of North West landscape which reminded me of my travels and I appreciated the color and shadow themes in his pieces. I then left the museum and grabbed some sushi with Jason for lunch. We then explored the west side of the city on our way out of New York and back into New Jersey. Overall the day was filled with wonderful experiences and I have come to enjoy New York much more than I anticipated.
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