New York, New York Day 7 - Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum and National September 11 Memorial and Museum

Our third and final day of our New York Pass was flagged for the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum.  It was a particularly apt time to be visiting the museum, as it was Fleet Week, and the city was awash with marines, sailors and coastguards.  I loved all the uniforms - the young men (the vast majority were men) looked so handsome and neatly pressed.  Even the Rockefeller Centre joined in, hence the flags in the Plaza at the top of this post.

Tim and I started the day with breakfast at one of our favourite discoveries - Café Metro, in the bottom of an office building near our hotel.  Café Metro sells oatmeal with two toppings in a large size for around $4 (including tax).  They also have a wide array of cooked breakfasts, pastries and beverages.  Here is Tim striding purposefully towards Café Metro:  

On this morning, I decided to go the cooked breakfast - bacon, scrambled eggs and home style potatoes (~$9):

It was a very satisfying way to start the day.

Back at the hotel, I discovered a vending machine that sold Cracker Jack:

Cracker Jack was immortalised in Breakfast at Tiffanys, so being in New York, I had to try some.  The prize was definitely a let-down - a baseball sticker:

However, the cracker jack itself was quite nice - a bit like Lolly Gobble Bliss Bombs.

After the cracker jack adventure, we headed off for the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, passing the New York Times building on the way:

 

The Intrepid is a former aircraft carrier that houses the museum.  The line to get into the museum was very long and the day was very hot, so we were glad that our New York Pass got us into a priority line, so that our wait was much shorter.

 

At the Intrepid, as part of Fleet Week, there were lots of uniformed servicemen and women to add to the atmosphere:

 

It reminded me of Top Gun, which incidentally was going to be screened at the Intrepid at 7pm that evening:

We bought a ticket to the Space Shuttle Pavillion as an add-on so that Tim could see the space shuttle, Enterprise:

It was named Enterprise when fans of Star Trek lobbied for their favourite TV series to be honoured:

The Enterprise was a prototype only and never went into space.  However, the museum has a history of all the space shuttles and their missions.

For Fleet Week, there were lots of school groups performing.  Here are members of an elaborately dressed school band:

On the deck of the Intrepid, there are lots of former military aircraft to view.  However, you get a fantastic view of all of them from the upper deck of the Intrepid, which the public can climb up to and talk with people who served on the Intrepid:

Inside the lower decks of the Intrepid are a series of museum exhibits.  This one is a space capsule like the one in the opening shots of I Dream of Jeannie - Major Nelson, are you in there?

The  Intrepid's decommissioning bell is behind glass in the museum:

Fittingly, we ate lunch nearby at the Galaxy Diner:
 

It is pretty much what it says on the tin - an old-fashioned diner with stickers of the universe on the ceiling:

We ordered the lunch special - soup and a sandwich for ~$12.  This was a spicy vegetable soup, with the crackers endearingly on the side (we love the practice of serving crackers with soup in the US):

I accompanied this with an egg salad sandwich, complete with slaw on the side:

It was old-fashioned food with old-fashioned service - not fancy, but solid and dependable.  We liked it.

After lunch, we visited the National September 11 Memorial and Museum.  As you can imagine, this is a thought-provoking, sombre place.  What really struck me was the ordinariness of many of the artifacts - possessions of ordinary people going about their business on what they thought would be an ordinary day - but it wasn't.

Where the two towers of the World Trade Centre were, they have installed bottomless pools of water with the names of the people who perished there around the sides:

For dinner that evening, we went to Roast Kitchen on the edge of Times Square:

This is a bowl place, like Supercharger but with the option of having meat in your bowl.  Here is my yummy pork bowl with pearl barley (~$12):

I also chose a local diet cola to accompany my meal: 

You can eat in or take away.  The hardest part was working out what to do, because the staff weren't going to help us and we had no other customers to copy from.

On the way home, we stopped off at Duane Reed, where Tim bought this cool can of Budweiser:

We also stopped off at Magnolia Bakery - Tim got a chocolate cupcake and I got a vanilla vanilla cupcake:

Yum!

 

Café Metro

1221 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

United States

Ph: +1 212 391 7800

 

Galaxy Diner

665 Ninth Ave

New York, NY 10036

United States

Phone: +1 212 586 4885

Roast Kitchen

Corner of 49th Street & 7th Ave

New York, NY

United States
Ph: +1 212-399-9100