Queens and Brooklyn day today. Until now I didn't think there was much nearby in Queens, but walking down 36th Avenue to get to the Museum Of The Moving Image I realised there was a street full of shops just three blocks away from where I'd been staying this whole time. Oh well. By the way, Queens decided to be different and have the avenues and streets run in opposite directions as they do in Manhattan - great. So this museum was supposed to have some huge video game collection, which is the only reason I really wanted to go, but it turns out the whole place was closed for renovations and expansion. Damn.
So, today will be a Brooklyn day then. I didn't research much of what Brooklyn had to offer, so instead heading down to the shore where Coney Island and the NY Aquarium is. Took about an hour and one train transfer to get here as most of the trains run east-west rather north-south. As the title (and Death Cab For Cutie song) indicates, there wasn't much open, being that it was almost winter. The aquarium was still going strong though, and I figured since it's in NY it might be super large and impressive.
The aquarium had most of your usual stuff, but wasn't anything special. They only had a few sharks and turtles, and no polar bears! The buildings where they had all the fish, jellyfish, rays and the like reminded me of Super Metroid for some reason. They have no lights on in this place (perhaps so you can see the fish better or something) and there was some ambient music playing from the speakers, plus some announcements going on (THE LAST METROID IS IN CAPTIVITY, THE GALAXY IS AT PEACE!) although it's probably a bit of a stretch to compare the jellyfish to Mother Brain.
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| Amusement Park stuff at Coney Island. All closed for the winter. |
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| These guys aren't that interesting, but they kept bumping against the glass which was cool. |
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| Only one tank with sharks, and they just randomly threw turtles, rays and other stuff in there too. |
Tried to board a train to get to the Brooklyn-Manhattan bridge, only I went through the turnstiles on the upper platform, and so I had to exit (you don't need to use your ticket to exit) and walk back out to the street and under the train bridge to get to the lower level. Not a big deal right? Wrong. If you use your ticket at a station you can't use it again for fifteen minutes. This is their way of preventing ticket sharing. Luckily (and I don't know what you'd do otherwise, except jump the gates if you can) there was a station attendant on duty, so I went up to him and explained, pretty clearly I thought, that my ticket got rejected with a "Just Used" message because I mistakenly entered on the upper platform on the other side. Sadly this guy was about as helpful as the taxi guy, and I had to explain it about three times before he even understood - surely this stuff happens all the time? Then he starts accusing us of ticket sharing - trying to both get through the gates with the one ticket. Despite my insistence this wasn't the case - who would be so stupid to try that then actually go up and talk to the attendant about it? - he just wouldn't accept it, so I have to go over, fetch the other ticket, so he can scan both and verify they're both valid. What an idiot. I can deal with a stupid taxi driver at 6am but this guy pretty much was testing my limit.
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| Brooklyn side of the bridge. |
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| If the footbridge collapses you won't fall into the river, you'll just get run over. |
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| The bridge leads towards City Hall on the Manhattan side. |
The boat tour guide said people fled the city from this bridge when the nearby WTC was going down. I wouldn't want to be on a bridge when crazy stuff is going on - just watch Cloverfield if you don't believe me.
Went over to Chelsea Piers next. This is a big recreational sporting area, which you might not expect in the downtown area - lots of courts and facilities for indoor sports for the kids. There's also a bowling alley and golf driving range, pretty good in all. I was also hoping to go to Chelsea Market over here, but I hadn't written down the directions so failed to find it.
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