Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, NYC

This picture is from Thanksgiving Day while the parade was going south on Avenue of the Americas.

We wanted to attend the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in person.  NYC is pretty expensive.  We made the mistake of telling our daughter we wanted to do it.  She and her husband are very generous and love us and also do all the Hilton points and frequent flyer stuff and like to live small but bougie.  She is really good at research and planning but things sometimes take on a whole other life when she and Mike get going with it.  Dave and I are a lot more spontaneous and Bohemian.  We have a camper that fits on our truck and just across from the Statue of Liberty, in Jersey City, is the Liberty Marina and RV Park.  We've camped there before a couple of times, several years ago, when riding the Five Boro's Bike Ride.  

There's one alibi with this story.  When Andrea was an angry teenager, at that particular age when they don't really like their parents, we took her and her boyfriend (who was just as mellow and nice as can be) to NYC on the Megabus or Bolt, a day trip, to NYC to see the Macy's Parade.  Andrea was such a witch that the actual experience of fun that day was rather, shall I say, dubious.  On one hand, we were in NYC during the parade.  One the other, we didn't have front row seats, warm, and without chaos.  

A similar outing with Andrea involved the Blue Man Group. She had seen them with her marching band group, a competitive marching band that had won many competitions for a dozen straight years.  They sat up close in good seats. When we bought tickets later as a Christmas gift, I think, we had nosebleed seats.  She wasn't impressed and let us know.  

So why would I have thought the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, seen in flashes of color here and there through small gaps of the hundreds of thousands of onlookers and skyscrapers was a good idea back in the day?  Well,  my adventurous and spontaneous spirit has always been there and now I see her more studious, perfectionistic, bougie spirit has also always been there.  

So expectation management is necessary when Andrea gets involved but she is a much better sport about things now that she is older.  Several months before, as the idea of the Thanksgiving trip, in lieu of dinner at home (I wanted to boycott all holiday dinners for the near future) began to coalesce, it occurred to me that Andrea would take over the trip with her usual planning.  And with Mike's work sometimes being unpredictable for vacation time, we might have to wait until closer to know for sure whether we could go.  All that means expensive.  Andrea and Mike are willing to pay for us. We don't really want to take them up on that all that often.  And we do like our freedom.  

So without further ado, I booked Dave and I into the Liberty Marina and RV Park for three nights.  I wanted to be in NYC to relax a bit (right, who goes there to relax?) and to putz around, maybe go to a museum, just walk around and see what's what, maybe see the parade forming up ahead of time.  I didn't want to wait until Wednesday after work and try to push northward into New York with everyone else, even though I'd planted the idea with our daughter of taking the Amtrak north from BWI.  

I later informed Andrea and Mike of my plan.  I suggested they do the Amtrak one way and ride back with us, leisurely, to their home on Friday after Thanksgiving.  And they were free to find whatever place they wanted in Manhattan.  We could take the PATH or the subway to them at any point.  That's what we did and it worked out great.  They got what they like and are accustomed to and so did we.  

What we like about a lot of our trips is the backstory, the prestory, the understory.  And all that happened the day before Thanksgiving up near Central Park where the parade was being amassed and all the floats were staged for final assembly and balloons were laid out in order of viewing and being blown up.  We learned that definitely, it's a thing to see the parade being put together.  You have to go through a long line (of course, it's NYC) and go through police screening (of course, it's NYC, or anywhere these days) for security, then you can walk by the fenced off street areas and watch the process.  

It takes up to 90 minutes to blow up one of those balloons that can be six stories high and 30 feet across and weigh 400 pounds and require 90 people to handle it with ropes.  Wow.  And we saw after the parade, during clean up (another kind of thing I like to see) is that they move the traffic lights too.  Of course they do, I thought, as I watched them carefully swinging them back into place across the route.  But it's one of those things you don't really think about despite all those years seeing the parade on TV. 

We thought it might be fun to be a volunteer for the parade but come to find out, you have to know someone who works for Macy's to be vetted as a volunteer.  Hmmm....we have a year to find a friend of a friend of a colleague who works for Macy's.  

The Day Before Thanksgiving

Another thing I like about going somewhere on our own and the lack of a specific plan.  We took the PATH (subway) from Jersey City under the Hudson to Manhattan and got out at the World Trade Center stop.  Hmmmm..... We'd been there before, a few times, since 9/11 but it never ceases to inspire grief and awe and a tumble of feelings that are undefinable.  It is now clean and beautiful and white with a huge and beautiful oculus in the subway station below.  Kind of like how heaven has been portrayed in a couple of movies.  Maybe they have used the look of that fragmented remaining infrastructure and repeated it a bit on the ceiling.  There were so many images of it in the aftermath of the devastation.  I should do more research on this because I can't remember what the discussion was at the time they were rebuilding.  But this is what it means to me, what it calls up in my memory. It is, for me, repeated as homage to history, to the dead, to the survivors, to New York's resilience.  

So the World Trade Center is on the southern side of Manhattan.  Central park is, well, about 60 some blocks north. We walked 16.5 miles the day before Thanksgiving.  We hadn't planned to walk quite that far.  But we did.  It felt good.  

A view of the outside part of the oculus, the white fan-type structure
 and the Mural Project which was done by about 60 invited, prominent, street artists. 

I should also say that we hadn't really planned to see the final preparations for the parade.  We really hadn't thought about it, or thought it was a thing.  To do.  We were just going to walk the parade route and see maybe decide the best place to post for the parade.  You know, doing planing by doing. Not the most resource-wise but definitely low tech and promising lots of unexpected bonuses.  Yes.

So in walking north through Manhattan, we circled Macy's and checked out the progress of the decor. 

We can't pass 44th Street without a visit to Dorothy Parker's Algonquin Hotel where we were lucky enough to stay one year when we were there working.  They've redone the lobby area a few times over the years and yet again, it looked different this time.  Also this time, the cat that often lounged in the lobby was missing.  I don't know if there is one that still hangs out or if it just got to be too much trouble one way or the other.  But a cat was lounging there when we stayed years ago.  I didn't get any pictures of the Algonquin, inside or out.  We had some complimentary coffee sitting in the lobby for a bit while discussing where to go next.  

We continued walking north to Central Park then went north and a bit west then popped out onto the streets on the west side where they were lining up the floats, putting them together and blowing up the balloons.  This was actually the most interesting part of our trip to NYC for the Thanksgiving Parade.  The weather was nice.  Not windy. Warmish. No rain.  

We happened first upon the peacock float.  As you can see in the pictures below it had no head and neck as we approached. There were no crowds, no lines to see this.  Just a gate separating the sidewalks from the street where all the work was going on.  We watched the float crew trying to unscrew the head and neck contraption from the floor of the trailer it was on so that it could be lifted by the crane onto the body of the peacock, with the guy standing inside the hole where the neck would go, waiting patiently.  An odd sight.  The odder sight was watching several members of the float crew twisting the bolts tighter (to the right) rather than to the left to loosen them.  Righty tighty, lefty loosey.  It's amazing how many people just don't know that.  Dave stepped up to the fence and tried to tell them that but they ignored him.  Too funny.  Eventually someone happened to go the other way (left) and ta da!  It started loosening.  This all took a lot longer, and with several more crew members tightening the bolts, until by accident (or maybe one of them actually listened to Dave) they got it right. 

So then we walked some more and found the entrance (and security) for watching the blowing up of the balloons for the parade.  I guess thousands of dollars go to pay the helium costs for blowing up the balloons which can take 45 minutes and up to 90 people maybe be required to hold the ropes to them during the parade.  We'd like to be volunteers but I read you have to be recommended by a Macy's employee.  Hmmm....Maybe we could find a friend of a friend who knows one.  We would at least know righty tighty, lefty loosey. 

It was all so cool.  Seeing things being put together was just so interesting.  It wasn't as crowded, and we could take our time and it wasn't cold.  Just a really nice day.  We walked 16.5 miles this day before Thanksgiving.  It felt good. 

I love Central Park.  What a treasure.  It's just so big and wonderful. 

We had pizza at a great little pizza tavern on our walk back south to the PATH station.  Pizza, tavern, fun ambiance, good service.  Chianti with the pizza.  Anchovies on it.  What's not to like? Then we went back to the camper for a bit and took a nap then back to Madison Square Garden to the train station to wait for our daughter and son-in-law to come in on the train.  That was fun, too.  It's just so interesting people watching in NYC.  You see so much diversity.  So much individuality, creativity, as well as an equally interesting lack of concern for appearances or seemingly, opinions from others.  I love it.  

While we were waiting, a backpack was left on the floor unattended.  We hadn't noticed how it got there, who had dropped it or left it.  Dave thought he recognized the backpack as one that a seemingly homeless guy had been wandering around with.  I went to let the police know about it just in case.  They were on the other side of the cavernous room we were in. They were nice.  One came over to check but by that time our daughter and her husband had arrived and also, Dave said, the maybe-homeless guy had come back and retrieved his backpack. I let the officer know it'd been collected already.  All was well.  He was nice.  

And speaking of that, all the police that were out the two days we were in NYC for the parade were just amazingly polite and nice and helpful from what we could see.  And we saw a lot of them.  New York's Finest were out by the hundreds.  The city was just so impressive with how organized they were, how well prepared for everything from the police, to the city workers doing the fencing for the parade route, the cleaners, the garbage collectors. It just made me so proud of the city and it's people. 

This is from walking to our daughter's hotel from the
Madison Square Garden train station the night
before Thanksgiving.  We sat with them at the table while they had dinner.  
We, of course, had drinks with them.  then we headed back on the PATH.  
A good day.

Thanksgiving Day in NYC.

We walked around a bit until we found a satisfactory spot to wait and watch the parade on an intersecting street.  We were facing Bryant Park and the library. We really couldn't see the marching bands which is a bummer because we love marching bands, but you can't have everything and we enjoyed the crowds, mostly, ahem, and even what we didn't necessarily cherish int he mishmash, it was fascinating and part of the whole experience.  

And so it begins:  the parade.

This turkey is the start of the parade.

While waiting for more big balloons to come by, I enjoyed ALL the sights. 

Anticipation?  Creepy?  The enjoyment of watching these
balloons come into view around the skyscrapers is just so
much fun.

More sky gazing.  I was looking for the chopper we could hear above.  
It's a small fly in the upper left side of the photo. 

So, wtf?  I don't know who all these characters are that the balloons are portraying
Too old, I guess, or too much into books and less into TV and capitalism.  Not a 
bad thing.  But all the same, I do love kitsch of them. 

And here is our peacock!  I felt a sense of ownership for this float, 
I must admit.  After spending so much time watching the right tighty lefty loosey 
that was going the wrong way, and just the plain gorgeousness of the colors and and the size 
of this creation, and knowing people were inside it moving the head back and forth - just awesome. 

And so the parade was over and we started walking towards Rockefeller Center so we could go up to the Top of the Rock, courtesy of our daughter and her husband.  What a day!  So much fun! 

Times Square.  What a fun mess.  But so iconically, tackily, capitalistically American.
But I do love me some NYC. 

From the Top of the Rock.

These next few pictures are looking north to Central Park.

And looking south and all around.

Lady Liberty

I love the whole islandyness of it, how when you are down on street
level hidden in among the skyscrapers you forget nature.  You forget all
the water surrounding the five boros.

This, below, is one of my favorite pictures taken from our adventure up to the Top of the Rock.  People were in the streets getting rare pictures of the blocks and blocks rarely closed to traffic. I love this couple doing their selfies. 

I am so grateful to be able to see all the things I see and to wander around this country and Canada at will, fleshing out most new ideas for grand adventures and picking at the wild hairs that grow in my psyche.  

So walking south from Rockefeller Station it was so interesting to see how fast the city cleaned up the mess, took down the gates, put the traffic lights back into place along Avenue of the Americas.

After Top of the Rock, we meandered south to our daughter's and her husband's hotel room and hung out for a while, resting our feet, discussing the parade, waiting for time to go to dinner.  Our daughter and her husband found a great place, a jazz bar/restaurant called The Flatiron Room.  It was a nice, classy place and we had the perfect table and a wonderful meal with LOTS of good, and yes, expensive wine.  It has over 1000 whiskeys, bourbons and ryes, cocktails and other goodies. The music was really good, just the right volume, and very nicely performed.  We are so grateful for these opportunities to experience these wonderful things.  I chose all vegan entries in the four course meal and really loved each one.   

After dinner we walked back to our daughter's hotel, said goodnight, and made our way back to the PATH and to New Jersey to our camper in the Liberty Marina and RV Park in Jersey City. 

I love the views in the PATH tunnels. 

Day After Thanksgiving. 

We made our way to the vic of the PATH station where our daughter and her husband would be meeting us to ride back to the BWI train station where their car was parked.  

I love street art, murals in particular.  I love this one in Jersey City near the PATH station.  But hmmmm, a tsunami wave depicted, heading towards Lady Liberty, getting ready to swamp her and then take Manahattan. It's called the Jersey City Wave mural and it was done by the artist, Fairey, who did the Obama "Hope" campaign poster.  It was meant to show the renaissance of Jersey City.  But, like I said, maybe it also shows a bit of ire towards it's more famous neighbor across the Hudson. 

No matter.  I love it.  What a great few days.  What a good time.  What good company.  We are grateful to have a fun and generous daughter and her good natured and also generous husband as travel companions and co-conspirators in devising a Great Adventure.