Manhattan by bike and other New York City, NY Transportation Tips

'Mode': AROUND
Category: Bicycle
Getting TO/AROUND: So I park my motorhome at Staten Island Ferry Terminal and this burley guy behind me turns out to be a NYFD guy commuting to work. He looked like a football player and was. It turns out we had a few athelete/friends in common.

One thing about NYers. If they like you, you will never have a better friend nor will you get better info. In the short time it took to take the ferry to Manhatten I was given a crash(bad word LOL) course on biking in Manhattan, what bike paths to use and how to get on/off the ferry with a bike(not as easy as you think). He was late to the firehouse so sped off and I tailed him long enough to see the west side bikeway and the World Trade Center crater before he drifted off in the horizon. Gotta love those NY/Irish/bigger than life guys!(I just described myself BTW LOL)

By days end I had cycled 32 miles and seen Chinatown, the WTC, Wall Street, Battery Park and Midtown....while biking accross the Brooklyn Bridge 2x on a 90 degree day!. The ONLY way to see NYC is by bike!

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'Mode': AROUND
Category: Train
Getting TO/AROUND: I know if youve been following my posts..by now i sound like a broken record. TAKE THE METRO. Only in New York its called the subway. Its lacks the ornateness of Moscow...the cleanlyness of Paris...the speed of Tokyo metros.But if you take the bus in NYC its both slow...and a little aggravating due to the sheer volume of people on the cities surface routes and the sheer volume of New Yorkers themselves..if I recall a week Metropass cost in the nieghborhood of $45...thats a steal compared to cab fare!

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'Mode': AROUND
Category: Other
Getting TO/AROUND: Manhattan is easy to get around if you do your homework and study the map and plot what you want to see. There are SO many things to see in New York. Good planning will reap great rewards.

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'Mode': AROUND
Category: Other
Getting TO/AROUND: Also be aware NYC consists of 5 different boroughs. All 5 have different attributes. Manhattan is the most popular but there are nice things to see everywhere!

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'Mode': AROUND
Category: Other
Getting TO/AROUND: The borough of Manhattan, which is home to 1.5 million, is what many think of when they think of New York City. Manhattan is the home of the Empire State Building, World Trade Center, Chrysler Building, Central Park, Tavern on the Green, Washington Square, and a plethora of other parks, museums, shops, and restaurants.

The name Manhattan comes from an Algonquin word meaning "island of hills."Some of the neighborhoods that make up Manhattan are the Upper East Side, known as the silk stocking district, which was once farmland with foraging pigs as late as 1853, the year work began on Central Park. Yorkville, in the east 80's, was once a thriving German community. Yorkville was known for its immigrant enclaves. Churches in this area still hold services in German, Hungarian, Czech, Slovak and other languages. Harlem has been the center of African-American culture for nearly a century. At 115 Street is the center of the Italian district that once covered a large part of East Harlem. In 1916 it elected Fiorello LaGuardia to Congress. He later became New York's first Italian-American Mayor.

Central Park is a two-and-one-half mile wide oasis. The Central Park Reservoir is surrounded by a running track. The reservoir was named after Jaqueline Kennedy Onassis, who often ran there.

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'Mode': AROUND
Category: Other
Getting TO/AROUND: The Borough of Brooklyn, which is home to a population of 2,300,000 people, is the most populous of the five boroughs. Brooklyn was founded by the Dutch, who originally named the borough Breukelen, or broken land, in 1636. Some of the neighborhoods and historic landmarks in Brooklyn include Bay Ridge, which is populated largely by Italians and Irish. Sunset Park is largely Latin American and Chinese. Bedford-Stuyvesant is home to the largest African-American community in New York, and Williamsburg has the largest population Hasidic Jews. The Greenpoint neighborhood, the furthest north, is home to large Polish, German, Ukranian, and Russian populations.

While Brooklyn is home to some of the most diverse neighborhoods in New York City, it also contains some of the most treasured historic sites. Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn, is still an active Army base. It was here that Confederate Generals Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee served as young officers in the 1830's. The Lief Erikson Parkway, near 67 Street, is named for the Viking navigator who is believed to have reached North America 500 years before Columbus.

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'Mode': AROUND
Category: Other
Getting TO/AROUND: The Pulaski Bridge separates Brooklyn rom the next of New York City's boroughs, Queens. The Borough of Queens, which is home to a population of almost 2 million, was once farmland, and at 108 square miles, is the largest of the five boroughs. Queens was named after Catherine of Braganza, wife of England's King Charles II.

The Queensboro Bridge spans the East River and soars over Roosevelt Island. After its completion in 1909, the population of Queens quadrupled. The bridge is also called the 59th Street Bridge, as in a song by Simon and Garfunkel. Near the foot of the Queensboro Bridge is Silvercup Studios, a former bakery that is now one of New York's largest film studios. This areas was a manufacturing area after the Industrial Revolution. It is sometime referred to as Hollywood East.

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'Mode': AROUND
Category: Other
Getting TO/AROUND: The Borough of the Bronx, which is home to 1,200,000, was named for Jonas Bronk, a Scandinavian and one of the area's first settlers in 1639. Other early settlers were Dutch, French, English, and Swedish. Originally the Bronx was part of Westchester County. It became the borough not an island when it joined New York City in 1898. The Bronx has continued to attract immigrants and is now home to large ethnic populations. At 138th Street is St. Jerome's Church Yankee Stadium is also a sight to behold in the Bronx, located to the right on the Bronx side of the Harlem River.

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'Mode': AROUND
Category: Other
Getting TO/AROUND: The Borough of Staten Island, which is home to a population of over 380,000 people, was settled in 1661 and became part of New York City in 1898. Fort Wadsworth was the name of the original settlement and it was a military installation for almost 200 years. The massive fortifications which lie near the Verrazano Bridge were built during the Civil War period.

Perhaps the best deal in all of NYC is the FREE ride from Manhattan to Staten Island by ferry. The view if NYC is 2nd to none!

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