NEW YORK—Spring is officially here, and it's time to get outside, breathe in the crisp air, and take a fresh look at the city. A cruise around the island (yes, we are on an island) on a riverboat sightseeing tour comes with refreshing breezes, great photo ops and may include a charming tour guide to fill you in on city facts and trivia.
There are several options out there. New York Water Taxi offers hop-on-hop-off tours from late April to October with 12 departure points. One- or two-day passes are available for $20 and $25.
If you're a cheap date, take a ride on the (free) Staten Island Ferry, 60,000 others do it every day to get to and from work on the five boats the City operates. The five-mile, 25-minute ride will glide you past the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and offer great views of lower Manhattan. The S.I. Ferry departs about every 15 to 30 minutes from Whitehall Terminal at South Ferry (the last downtown stop on the no. 1 train).
The mainstay for most tourists and New Yorkers is a water cruise with Circle Line Sightseeing, in operation since 1945. Do you how to find Pier 83? If you took the Circle Line cruise you would learn to subtract forty from the pier number to find the street where the pier is located—one of the many useful city tips learned on the tour.
A Ride on Circle Line
Boarding at Pier 83 (West 43rd Street and the West Side Highway), Circle Line offers several tours, including a three-hour trip around Manhattan and a two-hour semi-circle tour around the southern tip of the island, past the Statue of Liberty, up the East River to Midtown and back again. They also offer evening harbor lights tours, music cruises, and The Beast, a 30-minute, 45-miles-per-hour speedboat ride up and down the Hudson River. Prices range from $16 to $32.
A few fun facts learned on the Circle Line tour: TriBeCA is an abbreviation of "Triangle Below Canal." That big clock across the river in Jersey City that looks like a Ferris wheel is the biggest clock in the world, built by the Colgate Palmolive Company—the minute hand is 24 feet long and the tour guide tells an amusing (albeit false) tale about how many men the minute hand can hold and what happens to them at 20 past the hour. The copper on the Statue of Liberty is only one-eight of an inch thick—about the thickness of two pennies
The tour guide talked up the Big Apple (so named by Jazz musicians describing the chance to play in New York City) and had a well-timed and relaxed patter, much of which was lost on the many tourists that do not speak English—about 90 percent of their business.
So grab a jacket (it gets windy out there) and your zoom lens and go take a spring spin around the city.
More info can be found at:
http://www.nywatertaxi.com
http://www.siferry.com
http://www.circleline42.com
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