Postcard from New York City - Staten Island Ferry

Ah, the heady smell of diesel, commerce and commuting. Commuting by ferry brings a touch of glamour to what can be a very mundane process, especially of your journey takes you past an iconic landmark such as the statue of liberty, on a journey to or from an iconic skyline.


You can tell who the locals are. When I caught the hydrofoil across the bay of Naples from Naples to Sorrento I was running around like a loon with my camera, trying to capture the views. The locals were more interested in their books. So it was the case here also. Tourists rushed from port to starboard and back again to take in the view, while real commuters either sat inside in the warm or were content to sit in the chill winter sunshine ignoring the view.

Riding an iconic piece of transport immortalised in movies past one of the most famous landmarks in the world, you realise that the city is genuinely woven from a collection of landmarks and icons. All that was missing was a giant monkey.

At Staten Island everyone rushed off the ferry, round the terminal and straight onto the next ferry back. The ferry out had a hurricane deck, which is something you don't expect to see on a commuter ferry, the one back did not, so everyone was on at the open space at the front. It was so cold that I lost all feel in my head and had to keep touching my nose to see if it was running, for fear of an icicle forming. And the ferry is free! I was astonished. I wasted five minutes looking for a ticket office at the terminal, not quite believing it.

The weather the whole time was cold and with brilliant sunshine. The mains of the snowfall were piled up in Cental Park. You could tell it had really, really snowed here.

Walked back uptown via the site of the World Trade Centre, which is at once bigger and smaller than you'd think. Smaller because everything around it now is so neat and tidy, you can't imagine it was the site of such destruction. And people live there, continue to live there, in the neighbouring streets. That amazed me. We were sat at a cafe and a school bus stopped and let off the kids, and they looked ordinary kids, not rich kids, living in apartments one block from the most expensive property in Manhattan. This happens in London of course, with council flats dotted around the centre of town, but you just wouldn't get ordinary people living next door to the city skyscrapers. It really came home that when the towers came down, there was nowhere to run to. If you ran for a minute you'd be at a river. Best haul your ass uptown and don't stop for Starbucks. And it's bigger because, once again, New Yorkers are seeing just now many skyscrapers the can put on one block. The answer here is 'a lot'. Apparently there are so many skyscrapers in the because New York is on granite. London is on clay, hence spreading out rather than up. Try building a skyscraper on loam and before you know it you have a bungalow with a lot of basements.

Stopped at the 9/11 gift shop (yes, really) and picked up the obligatory NYPD and FDNY tee shirts. Bought wrong size, XXXL. American XXXL at that. The bloody thing could have sheltered a family of five, or a Rangers fan.


Back to exchange the next day, the last in the city. This gave me an excuse to check out Greenwich Village, the only area of the city not to be laid out in a grid, meaning I promptly got lost. This was, I think, one of the nicest parts of new York, it has a more intimate and laid back atmosphere.