New York: Intrepid Air Sea and Space Museum and the Empire State Building

"Start spreading the news. I am leaving today, I want to be a part of it. New York New York".

We weren't sure what to expect when arriving in New York.... a city so busy it never closes, millions of people everywhere....  In places it is all of this but today when we ventured out not all the streets were crowded, not all the attractions had lines hours long. In fact, New Yorkers are not quite so prevalent and much nicer than their reputation suggests.

After treating Eric to a quick visit to the famous B&H Photo Store and a walk past the worlds most useless staircase, we headed to the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space museum. The museum is located on board the retired Aircraft Carrier Intrepid moored in the Hudson river together with the post WW2 submarine Growler and a Concorde on the pier.  The prototype space shuttle Enterprise makes an slightly out of place but interesting exhibit on the carrier flight deck together with a range of retired military aircraft.

They built the stairs but forgot the building

Walking through the submarine Growler was eye opening: looking at the cramped quarters with crew sharing bunks (In some cases 1 bunk for 3 enlisted men in 3 eight hour shifts!) in close proximity to all the equipment and each other.  The exhibit came with information about the chilling role the Sub played as a nuclear weapons platform and, conversely, a nuclear deterrent during the Cold War.

On board Growler

The aircraft carrier, Intrepid, featured a range of interesting displays on the hanger deck.  For Samuel and Elise the most fascinating space part was the Gemini craft. We learned it was designed in consultation with astronaut, Gus Grissom, who was short and so the resulting craft was very cramped for other astronauts. It was recovered, along with Gus and John Young by the Intrepid after a mission. Samuel and I were fascinated by the fact that Young sneaked a sandwich on one of their missions and Gus ate some bites, the NASA ground control were angry because the crumbs could have interfered with the instruments.

Samuel not interfering with the instruments

Eric was fascinated by the planes and helicopters displayed on the flight deck, including this Blackbird.

After the museum, next stop was M&M’s world where we tried some flavours we’d not seen before. A tip... marshmallow M&Ms are the best.

Finally we went up the Empire State Building. Samuel did not like being that high. It was a shame  that on a day of only high cloud there was so much smog. 

One thing that we noticed was, despite reputation, NYers are some of the friendliest people we have encountered on our journeys.  People have spontaneously helped us with directions, chatted to us (responding to our accents) and one lady even gave Samuel some money for candy when he picked up some dropped coins for her.