Began the day feeling shattered from yesterday, with my whole body aching from the many miles of Manhattan’s streets we pounded yesterday. Headed straight for the Natural History Museum adjacent to Central Park and ended up in the wrong queue three times much to my annoyance. There was no doubting that almost everything found in there was fascinating, but my brain just didn’t want to know. There are only so many stuffed animals and ancient ornaments you can get excited about you see? The top floor was decent however; packed with dinosaur skeletons. I didn’t know anything about these remains other than from what I saw on Jurassic Park, so headed for the basement where there were further stuffed animals and a rather massive blue whale scale replica hanging from the roof.
Needing something a bit more in tune with what we’re into, so headed back downtown to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum. I knew I’d enjoy this place before we arrived, but didn’t know it would be so good. Things weren’t looking promising at the beginning though. Only myself and Small Irish were inside the whole place, which is never a good sign, but the introductory film was nothing short of ace. Looking at the history of the genre, I was pleasantly reminded at how our small island has made the greatest contribution to guitar music post-1960 as the show took us from The Beatles, The Stones, The Who through to Led Zeppelin etc.
On entry we were greeted with an Aladdin’s Cave full of spellbinding memorabilia. Handwritten lyrics to Billie Jean, The Boxer, Voodoo Chile....ah loads. It was the clothing and other bits that really stole the show. Springsteen’s flame-painted Cadillac, handwritten lyrics to my favourite song of his; “Thunder Road,” MJ’s stage jacket and gloves, Madonna’s pointy bra thing, guitars belonging to Pete Townshend, Johnny Cash, Prince, Jimi Hendrix and to top it off; a massive exhibition dedicated to the genius of The Clash. Pure magic, much fun. Shame we weren’t allowed to take any pictures or any of the stuff with us.
Next up, we headed uptown again to Grand Central Terminal. Those that have been can vouch for the fact that this is architecturally the greatest train station on the planet. Those famous large windows shone light on to the rush hour concourse majestically as we were able to gaze at the chaos below from the marble steps which overlooked the whole scene.
The weather had been pure miserable all day but had perked up slightly by the time we left the building. Immediately I suggested doing the boat tour around Manhattan by night again so we jumped in one of them Yellow Cabs for the short journey to the bottom of West 42nd Street. Although Small Irish will deny this, she read her watch wrong and thought we had an hour more than we did. We had managed 100 yards in rush hour traffic as the metre was shooting up, emptying my pockets by the minute. I then noticed the time and told him to stop immediately as we’d missed the boat (again), (which the cabbie didn’t like), before taking ages to count my change to pay him (which he also didn’t like) before he got a ticket for parking illegally.
I’d given up on being able to do anything more with our visit, but looked to the skies to see they’d all but cleared. Result. This meant that we were able to go and do the Top of the Rock attraction that we had tried to crack for two nights running. What a way to end our visit to NYC! I’ll bang some pictures on that Facebook at some point, but as it stands, I don’t think I have seen a more stunning sight. 55 floors up “New York like a Christmas tree,” as Bono sang once was there right in front of us. The atmospheric thunder storms lurked in the distance as the sun set at the other side of the building. We saw the sun set, the night fall and the city light up before our very eyes – it couldn’t have ended better. Although this completed the things I wanted to see from a sightseeing point of view, there are a million and one stones left unturned in this awesome city. What of the culture? What of the music? What of the nightlife? What of the other districts? What of the literary references I took so much from in books like On the Road? I’ll keep coming back here as often as I possibly can in my lifetime to unturn them one by one most definitely.
Tomorrow morning we leave for Philadelphia. Don’t know that much about the place apart from spreadable cheese, A.I.D.S and high levels of crime. We’ll see.
