It was a birthday present from the husband, and it’s been on the ‘to do while we live in nyc’ list for a while: taking the topless bus. After all, they parade those tourists right by our apartment window every week.
So on Saturday, we hopped on. And off. I like the hopping. In fact, we went into the office to collect our boarding tickets and negotiated some free extras along the way (2 sunset cruise tix, valued at $51 each. Nice.). Then walked the heck out of Times Square and the weaving bus line down towards Penn Station & the 34th street Macy’s instead. Good decision on our part, only took 3 stops to make our way to the top of the bus.
We hopped off at South Street Seaport and hopped on the bus to Brooklyn – a place we haven’t explored too much yet. There we hopped off at Prospect Park, designed by the same guys that did Central Park and a project they supposedly consider to be more successful. It was beautiful. We felt like we were out in the country somewhere… not in New York City. We walked a bit and ate a bit and found a cocktail and went in to some creative stores and all kinds of good stuff.
Fast forward … night bus tour. Next day, the Upper West Side loop that goes by our apartment, and into Harlem, and … we didn’t know this, down the same street where we’re going to move to (but not by the apartment – yay for less bus traffic by future windows). We rode that bus twice. Two different tour guides each with their own slant on the things we passed by. We even hopped off in Harlem and explored Dinosaur bar-b-que … awesome … and Fairway grocery (way better than we expected – deserves its own post) … and then walked home (from 125th to 86th) down Riverside Park which was lovely as the sun was just nearly setting and the river and park were awesome.
So … a great weekend, a lovely extended birthday-excuse to do something from the list, rich memories to savor.
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