So on Friday I went into New York City to pick up my Dutchies from the Penn Station, as their flight was coming in from JFK. I ended up hitching a ride with a coworker who goes into the city every weekend to take care of her mother-in-law.  We left home for the city at 5PM.

The interesting thing was we made it into the city fairly quickly – maybe a half hour or so. But we ended the city via the George Washington Bridge, so near 180th street or so. But as we needed to get to Chinatown (near the southern tip of Manhattan) we had a-ways to go on the Henry Hudson Parkway. The traffic was definitely the heaviest near the top of Manhattan, but the views of the Hudson river and New Jersey on the other side at night were spectacular. (For that matter, George Washington Bridge also looked pretty when lit up.)

After about 90th street or so, the traffic eased up slightly. By the time we got to 34th street, traffic had begun to move at a mostly steady clip, only slowing down for the various exits. Although I was headed for 34th street & 7th avenue, it is too much of a pain for her to exit at that point when she really needed to go to Chinatown instead. So she ended up exiting on Canal Street and heading east to Chinatown, letting me off at 5th avenue.

After about 5 or so minutes getting my bearings, I began to walk north through the named streets (not even at 2nd street yet). When I hit 4th street, I found my way blocked by the Washington Square park, so I decided to cut across it rather than going around. I did get a nice picture of the Christmas tree there, from a distance:

I kept walking north until 14th street, before I headed west to 6th avenue. I took the F/M orange line to 34th street, and then walked west to Penn Station. (All of those Rangers games over the years definitely helped me get my bearings! Thanks Roger! ♥)

After that, it was just a matter of waiting around in the NJTransit area for about 10 minutes before the Dutchies arrived. Just in time too – we had about 6 minutes to get the next train. This was the last train to get before we would have had to wait an hour at the transfer point. But we made it!