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  • Day 132

    Not a Brilliant Start.

    December 5, 2017 in the United States ⋅ ☁️ 14 °C

    Today - bus into Manhattan - easy. The bus stop is just around the corner from where we are staying and Ella had given us two metro cards to get us going. A very helpful young passenger we had met at our stop told us when we were coming up to where we wanted to get off - once again easy. After a strong cup of coffee and a hot chocolate at Pret we entered the subway and bought our unlimited 7 day metro cards - again easy. With cards in hand we approaced the gates and after a few swipes of the card the wrong way I had it mastered and we headed to Times Square to find the Tourist Information Office.
    Perhaps we were tired after the long day yesterday, perhaps it was the miserably cold, grey, windy day - who knows but it all seemed downhill from there. Times Square was packed, humanity as far as the eye could see and everyone appearing to be in a hurry. Rubbish blowing up the streets, dust in the eyes. We questioned some of the local constabulary as to the whereabouts of the tourist office. We were informed that is was more of a shipping container than an office in a building, like I had assumed, and that it was bright pink and just across the road. Now, bright pink would stick out like dogs balls one would assume, even in the colourful Times Square. Wrong. It just wasn’t there. To the complete surprise of the policemen it had just disappeared. Shifted - who knows but after a bit of searching in both directions we assumed that it no longer existed.
    By this stage, with the very cold weather and all, Noel needed to see a man about a dog. No restrooms were jumping out at us and I knew Macy’s was in the area so off we went on the hunt. Macy’s found now where are the restrooms. Macy’s is massive and in the midst of renovations but before a major catastrophe occurred we did find the restrooms and could now turn our attentions back to finding some sort of tourist information service.
    A light bulb moment. A train station - Penn Station is close. Found ourselves a tourist information office at the station so we got what we wanted at last. Found more restrooms so we availed ourselves again because you never know if or when you’ll ever find another and bought onward train tickets to Washington while we were there. Should have bought train tickets while we were there but did not have enough money or ID on us to do so. At least we know where to go back to.
    Over the crowds and the wind and the cold we headed back to Staten Island. The saving grace for the day was seeing The Statue of Liberty in the evening light - what a lady!
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