Alarming Female

Manhattan and the Brooklyn Bridge from the Manhattan Bridge

One of the BEST things we did in New York was take the Gray Line Night Loop tour of Manhattan. We totally lucked out by getting an amazing tour guide; he was a school teacher from Brooklyn who does evening tours on the open-air double-decker bus. I took this photo from atop the Manhattan Bridge–if you click the photo to enlarge it you can even see the Statue of Liberty on the very left edge.

Since we flew on the JetBlue red-eye and arrived in NYC at 5:30 am Eastern time, we were understandably exhausted that first day in the city. Thankfully, our hosts planned two different Gray Line tours for us that day, so we weren’t walking much and mostly riding and hearing about the city. The morning tour was the Uptown Loop and took us from the Gray Line Visitor’s Center through Hell’s Kitchen to Central Park West, the Dakota apartments, American Museum of Natural History, and on to the Cathedral of St John the Divine, where we disembarked and toured the museum-like cathedral. We had a great tour guide that first leg of the trip also; a woman who lived in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood and really knew a lot about the neighborhoods we traveled though.

After leaving St John the Divine, though, we hopped on another tour bus and, unfortunately, had a miserable guide who just couldn’t pull it together. If you try a Gray Line tour, every bus (except the Night Loop tour) is “hop on, hop off” as they run all day long. It’s a crap shoot regarding who you get as a guide but you can always hop off and wait for the next bus if your guide is a dud.

The Night Loop tour was an experience worth the flight to NYC. Our guide was funny and absolutely passionate about NYC and especially his hometown, Brooklyn. He looked every bit the geeky math teacher he is during the school year. But his love of teaching shown through his entire monologue, that he kept going at an amazing pace, as he bragged about the city and told us little anecdotes about this or that building or neighborhood.

At one point, we were at an intersection when an FDNY truck pulled up and he mentioned that the company that truck represented, Company 10, was previously housed in the World Trade Center. This insight and countless others is what made this tour outstanding. I wish I knew the guy’s name so I could pass it on to you. He was truly gifted.