This is a little different. We did not travel on the water but I am posting about New York City. We made 2 trips into the City on the ferry. The ferry runs every half hour so it is pretty convenient.
Liberty Landing Marina is Located in the Liberty Landing Park in Jersey City, New Jersey. Lots of wide open spaces and lots of grass for Candy. Only Founders Park in Islamorada is better than this park.
The 1st day we visited several stores that were on Lenore’s NYC list. We took cabs everywhere because they were to far to walk. The last shop was a trimmings store with all types of ribbons and decorations to be added to whatever you had in mind. This was in mid-town on 6th Ave. The pedestrian traffic was incredible but maybe not for a city with 7 million people.
When we got back to Liberty Landing we notice that several of the “Around The World” racing sailboats had left and other appeared to be getting ready to leave. When Candy and I went for our walk I noticed that Off Leash was tied up in the harbor so we went over to congratulate them on their Loop completion. While we were talking Humbug and Carol Anne came into the outer harbor but had to wait for the remaining racing sailboats to leave. Once they did, they came into the slips on either side of Off Leash. It was ironic that the slowest of the 3 boats was the first to arrive after 2 days on the water from Cape May.
We had docktails with champagne to celebrate the Loop completions. Loretta from Carol Anne had even written in the Looper Blog that the 3 boats completed their Loops on the same day at the same location which could be a Looper first.
The rain started during the night and rained on and off until late morning. Lenore and I went into NYC again by ferry today and took a cab to Little Italy. Mike from Off Leash had mentioned that Little Italy has been pretty much been taken over by the Chinese and he was not wrong. We visited an Italian Market and an Italian Bakery/Restaurant that were nestled in among the Chinese stores.
Impressions of New York are that there are way too many people and you cannot go anywhere without some kind of road reconstruction going on. Some of this is probably also the utilities under the street but it is still construction. All the cab drivers have a heavy accent and it is hard to understand them. We did not have one American cab driver in the cabs we took. The views from Liberty Landing of the New York skyline were fabulous.
We went to dinner at the Liberty Landing Restaurant with the new Gold Loopers. It was a lot of fun and the excitement of the Loop completion had not worn off Loretta yet (that is not a bad thing). Everyone had a good time and everybody, except Off Leash, is leaving tomorrow (6-7-14) and headed for their home ports. Off Leash is technical in their home territory, NYC. They have friends coming to visit them.