'another day on the buses'

That’s the New York City Mass Transit Authority which runs bus and subway services within New York. The bus service operates in all five boroughs of New York City, employing over 4300 buses on 219 routes. The subway network is the 7th largest in the world with over 400 stations and 209 miles of routes.

The cost of access to this vast network? $29 (GBP£17.90) for a 7 day unlimited use Metrocard. Of course you don’t have to buy a weekly ticket, individual rides cost $2.25 (GBP£1.39) each and allow transfers between train and buses. Although we were only there for 6 days the weekly ticket offered us the best value even though we didn’t use one day of its validity. Anyway we did our utmost to get full value and probably made a total of around 30-40 subway and bus journeys.

The subway is easy to understand and use, the only slight drawback is that in Manhattan most lines run north south which limits things when you want to cross east west. Although we had a subway station about 5 minutes walk from our hotel in Queens we usually used the bus even though it took a little longer. I think you feel more ‘local’ when you travel by bus :-) A few interesting things about the bus. Firstly drivers handle no money, passengers must either put $2.25 in coins into the hopper (exact amount only) or you feed in a Metrocard which is read and then returned to you. Almost without exception the drivers don’t seem to consider that it’s necessary to say ‘hello’ or ‘goodbye’ to anyone. I didn’t let this defeat me and wished every one of them a Good Morning/Afternoon etc and even managed to get a response a couple of times :-) Up to three children can travel free when accompanied by an adult. Interestingly children are not defined by age but must be less than 44 inches (1.12 metres) in height. Certainly easy to administer if you’ve got a 44 inch mark on the bus wall but a bit unfair on those who are naturally tall for their age.

The bus floors have an unusual floor covering in that it looks littered and dirty while actually it’s clean. On my first bus trip I actually tried to move with my foot some of the markings on the floor because I thought they were bits of rubbish. Here’s a picture of the floor.

Many subway stations are decorated with colourful subway ceramic plaques and tile mosaics. Of these, many take the form of signs, identifying the station’s location. Much of this ceramic work was in place when the subway system originally opened on October 27, 1904.

And finally one method of transport not available with a Metrocard, the space shuttle. It was flown into New York on the back of a NASA Boeing 747 where it will become a museum exhibit. This is the best shot I could get of it from the window of a moving bus as we passed JFK Airport.

If you look back through this blog you’ll see that we always go away at this time of year to celebrate ny birthday. Well, this year it’s one of those ‘milestone’ birthdays so I thought something a bit special was called for …. in a few hours time we’re off to New York for 6 days!

I’ve been before but this time we intend to do things which we haven’t got round to before like visit Coney Island and Brighton Beach. The High Line has also opened since I was last there and I was unaware of the Roosevelt Island tramway. I’ve stood and stared at the Brooklyn Bridge, this time we’re going to walk it and then explore Brooklyn Heights. A highlight, I hope, will be dinner on Saturday night when we’ve managed to get an invitation to an underground supper club, these are ‘occasional’ restaurants opened up in the host’s home. You hear of them by word of mouth and the location is only disclosed once you’re invited and have accepted. I’ve got the address now and it’s a loft apartment in Brooklyn with catering by an invited chef. More conventionaly lunch on Wednesday is booked at L’Ecole, “Nestled in the heart of SoHo, L’Ecole is the only restaurant of its kind in New York City: a dining experience where tomorrow’s top chefs, currently students at the prestigious French Culinary Institute, serve the very best in classic and contemporary French cuisine. We also hope to get tickets to see Jersey Boys on Broadway. Even though the songs are 50 years old I remember every word, they were great times to be a teenager!

Will report back next week :-)

Here are the newest additions to our mini-flock of chickens, they were hatched yesterday! Just have to wait 16 weeks and we’ll get more eggs .. so long as thay are hens. Otherwise it’s coq au vin!

I’m no amateur astronomer but on Monday night I couldn’t help but notice that things looked different in the western sky. Here’s a picture I took with my mobile ‘phone, click on it to see a larger version with more detail.

Pointing my mobile at the moon using the Google Sky app showed that object nearest to the moon is Venus and the feinter, but still very bright object lower in the sky is Jupiter. More detail here.