Final day in Manhattan

All good things must come to an end, that would be today. Our visit to Manhattan and parts of New York state has been good, somewhat sweaty, but good. Now for the finale, Central Park and surrounding area. Downed another good buffet breakfast at the Riu Plaza hotel so now off to a new adventure.

Central Park is about 13 blocks walk from the hotel. Not too bad early in the day and besides, new things to see. Once there we enter the famous Columbus Square, home to more than 50 shops, world-class restaurants and … wait for it… the Trump Tower! Oh yeah, there’s also a statue of Columbus. Guess the protesters can’t get to the top to pull it down, too much effort. This area is also where we find our transportation around central park. Not going to try and walk this place. It covers ~1.4 sq.mi with a maze of walkways and paths intersecting in every direction possible. Nope, a bike rickshaw is our choice.

Columbus

World Globe sculpture by Kim Brandell

Entrance to Central Park (one of)

Narpha (I think)

Narpha, (I think), is our driver / guide for the 1hr long pedal tour. Although he doesn’t have the best English, he tries to describe the sites he points out along our way. That’s OK, most of the sites relate to movies we haven’t seen so just fun to see them.

The Lake

There is a sculpture in the park that is somewhat interesting. It is a sculpture of Alice in Wonderland. Not sure what the relationship of this mystical character is to Central Park but hey, that’s good with us. And wouldn’t you know it. Once we get to the sculpture, Spielberg is directing a remake of the famous fable. OK, Spielberg wasn’t really there but the crew had to be part of some famous film making enterprise, just look at the sound man, a pro!

Another Spielberg original film

Alice (I think)

OK, more to see. Off on our rickshawbike to the next site, a fountain. Better known as Bethesda Terrace, this site has not one but two architectural features, the terrace and the fountain. The fountain is one of the largest in New York and is known as the “Angel of the Waters”. This neoclassical sculpture by Emma Stebbins was dedicated in 1873 to commemorate the opening of the Croton Aqueduct that supplies New York with drinking water. OK, that’s pretty cool.

Angel of the Waters

Next up in Central Park, The Lake. Although the lake is nice, it’s the reflecting view that makes this lake a visitors stop. Probably the most famous reflection here is that of San Remos luxury apartments. And I do mean luxury. These apartments are the most expensive in Manhattan. How do I know? Well, would Tiger Woods, Demi Moore, our old buddy Spielberg, Mary Tyler Moore and a whole host of others live in a slum? Shoot no! Let’s not forget Barry Manilow, Bono, Dustin Hoffman, and Steve Jobs also had apartments here. Madonna applied for an apartment in 1985 but was turned down, go figure.  Demi Moore sold her apartment for the tidy sum of $45,000,000.00, the most expensive unit ever sold at the San Remo.

The Lake and San Ramos Towers

Bridge over the Lake (looks like pea soup!)

San Ramos Towers

Continuing to pedal our ass around Central Park, our next site marks the loss of a great musician, John Lennon. John Lennon and Yoko Ono moved in the Dakota apartments directly across from Central Park in 1973. (Madonna was also denied an apartment in this building). The evening of December 8, 1980, Mark David Chapman met Lennon and had him sign his album, Double Fantasy. Later that evening, John and Yoko were returning home when Chapman approached them in the doorway of the Dakota and shot at Lennon 5 times with his 38 revolver, 4 of which hit him in the back. Lennon was rushed to the hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival. Chapman pleaded guilty to murdering Lennon and received a life with possibility of parole sentence. He has been denied parole 11 times since 2000.

Memorial to Lennon in Central Park

Doorway (on right) where Lennon was murdered

Why did he do it? Chapman claimed that he was a religious person and that Lennon’s comment that “the Beatles are more famous than Jesus” angered him to the point of committing the crime.

Finished our bike tour of Central Park, paid Narpha (I think) and started off for our last site in Manhattan, Grant’s Tomb. This is another subway trip so hopefully the credit card works.

The card worked, finally, so here we are at Grant’s Tomb. BTW- do you know who is buried in Grant’s tomb? Before I answer, a little history on that question. “Who is buried in grant’s Tomb”, is a question that is somewhat famous. Most think that it originated on the Groucho Marks Show in the late 1940s. At times when contestants were having difficulty answering questions and getting prizes, Groucho would throw out a simple question so he could award some cash. “Who’s buried in Grant’s tomb” was one of those simple questions.

But it appears that the question was actually asked way back in the 1920s by then comedian, Ed Wynn in his newspaper column, “The Perfect Fool”.  His questions were, “Do you know that a female moth is called a myth?”; “Do you know where your lap goes when you stand up?”; and finally, “Do you know the name of the general that is buried in Grant’s tomb? If you don’t ask me.”

Sorry, got off track. General Ulysses S. Grant and his wife, Julia Dent Grant, are buried in Grant’s Tomb.  Doesn’t really matter who is buried there, once we arrived, we found that it was closed due to COVID-19 cut backs. I guess they’re still there but couldn’t verify that. Got a few pics then back to the subway and the end of our New York adventure.

General U.S. Grant’s tomb

Wow, 10 days went by fast. It was fun, a bit expensive, and entertaining. We even met a few people along the way that made it a fun trip. So, with that, adios amigos. Time to get back home and start packing for Panama. The journey continues…