First day in Jersey City

October 9,2014 Thursday

A description of our condo.  We thought at first that it was a converted, repurposed fire station.  It looks just like it, but Beata, the owner, says it is only eight years old, that she was the first owner.  It is a nice place in a good neighborhood in Jersey City.  The ceilings look to be about ten feet high and it has hardwood floors.  It has a huge island in the kitchen/living area.  A bargain at $115.00 per night.

We had a bit of a fiasco buying subway tickets, mostly due to our unfamiliarity with the system.  Beata gave us instructions and we still bought the wrong pass.  But it really doesn't matter much as we will still be able to use what we bought and get around ok.  We took the New Jersey subway into midtown Manhattan and then walked a bit to an elevated walk/park.  It originally was a rail line that serviced upper floor loading docks in the old meat packing district.  It was abandoned as a working railway in 1980 and sat growing weeds until the city redid it in about the year 2000.  Now it is quite a nice walk, with plants and water features replacing the weeds, though it narrows a bit in places and there is congestion in those places with all of the foot traffic it gets.  And today was a weekday, though a bright sunny fall day. Lots of construction going on in the area and there were rows of workers eating lunches on the benches that lined the walkways.

There seems to be a Comic Con convention happening on Manhattan.  Lots of full costumes and face masks in the Greenwich Village area.

We are in a bit of an inner city location.  No close by supermarkets, just little corner stores.  In all of our wanderings today, we did not see a single Starbucks, McDonalds or gas station.  But, according to the local news, gas is now under $3 in NJ.

We just heard, at about 8:15pm, the noise of what must have been a huge fireworks display.  We tried to GOOGLE it to see what was being celebrated, and had no luck.  It was so intense that we felt there should have been a calendar of events online to advise us! 

Colleen and John