Although very small, Port Jefferson attracts a fair amount of tourists, since it has a very good ferry connection with the mainland. It is a very sweet place, almost too sweet, with lots of very nice cafes and lots of crafts and antiques shops.
We happened to be there at the time of the local Charles Dickens Festival, apparently the 17th year running, a weekend-long festival of parades, craft workshops, local music, etc. You can take part in events, or just walk down the street to wonder at the many villagers in period clothes reciting bits of 'A Christmas Carol'. We witnessed the final grand parade of the festival, where the village mayor and other council members rode on a miniature version of the aforementioned ferry. At the village hall, they all sang carols and released a few fireworks, all in all very sweet to be around to see.
We stayed at Danfords. This was the conference location, so didn't have much choice. The staff were mostly rude and the place was pretentious, so I wouldn't particularly recommend it, but then again it is the only hotel close to centre. On the bright side, the room overlooked the marina, so you can see below the view from our balcony. If you ever head Port Jeff's way, I think a better choice is the quirky family-run Golden Pineapple B&B.
On a sunny morning, we walked along the beach you can see in the distance in the photo above. The whole Port Jeff experience was very pleasant, seems like a perfect place to rest and recharge.
But then, after all this peace and quiet, we headed off to New York City...
When getting off the train at the central Penn Station, we were hit by the crowds, noise, the chaos and mayhem, and it took hours to come to our senses after that...
Fortunately, our hotel was in a quiet residential area on the Upper West Side, not too bad and the price was really decent for NYC standards (outrageous by any other standards...). A few meters away from the hotel was the best diner, we had breakfast there most mornings, and it was finally a place where we could have some no-sugar yogurt, some fresh berries on cereal, and some food without masses of salt.
Since there was far too much to choose from in terms of attractions and museums, we let financial pragmatism decide. We got a NYC Pass, a discounted ticket for a number of attractions, and stuck to those. I won't bore you with details of the usual NYC attractions, since there are thousands of other such boring websites out there, but there were some things we enjoyed more than we thought we would, so we'll share these.
The Guggenheim Museum is a brilliant building to walk around. I had seen photos in the past, but it doesn't compare to being there, when we visited they had a Picasso black and white exhibition that somehow works really well with the building.
For Europeans, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is not all that interesting, a large part of it being European painters, Greek and Roman stuff, some Far East and African art that you would have seen in bigger European museums. One interesting section, though, is the Central and South American artifacts. Besides the usual Aztec objects, which tend to be intimidating and fear-inducing, there was much other wonderful, kinder art, that was a joy to look at, such as the ones below. The first image is from the West Mexico shaft tomb tradition, the following ones are Peruvian animal-shaped bottles.
The Museum of Modern Art is brilliant and definitely worth-while, with so many of the famous modern painting and sculpture, and lots of interesting newer stuff, with some very cool digitally-enhanced art displays. They had a temporary exhibition of Edvard Munch, including The Scream, which clearly inspired us...
And what is certainly worth it is the Museum of Natural History. The massive complete dinosaur skeletons will appeal to the child in you, at least if that child grew up with dinosaur books and toys. The Hayden Planetarium Space Theatre puts on an amazing show about the origins of the universe, galaxies, stars. The whole natural evolution galleries are very cool and really well organized. Unlike many museums of natural history, which are collections of separate objects, this one really does create a story and points out the underlying natural laws.
In terms of doing anything outside the museum, I think a really good idea would be to go on one of the cruises. Would have never chosen to do this if it wasn't already included in the City Pass, but it was a great way to find out about all the neighbourhoods, their history and character, before you explore each individual one. Plus the views are pretty cool.
Our cruise was at dusk, and it got dark by the time it finished.
Apart form all this, we did a lot of walking around the various neighbourhoods, from SoHo, Little Italy, West and East sides, central Manhattan and the Financial District. I think we were not overly impressed with what you can see as a tourist, but NYC generally seems like a pleasant place to live. I guess the most pleasant area we though was NoLIta, a few blocks at the North of Little Italy, an area that only recently acquired its own identity as an alternative, artsy neighbourhood, lots of lovely individual restaurants and shops.
There was much more we would have wanted to see, but we had to fly off. Into the sunrise.
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