A Country Mouse Goes to the City: Ignite the Night

Lighting Up the Night at Macy's Annual Fireworks Show

We began our day late by getting out of Manhattan for a few hours. As always, there were lots and lots of people, but the 4th brought even more. So onto the subway we went and on exiting the station, we found ourselves at Dylan's Candy Bar. We just had to go in and check out the three floors of candies inside. There was even a party planning office complete with a wall of color-coordinated candies for any color scheme you could imagine.
Then it was on to the Roosevelt Island Tramway where we rode the aerial tram to Roosevelt Island. This island is in the East River between Manhattan and Queens. The tram runs alongside the Queensboro Bridge, also known as the 59th Street Bridge, which is the bridge that Simon and Garfunkel sang about in Feelin' Groovy. The island is so calm. There is a walking path along the waterway running around the entire length of each side of the 2-mile long island. We saw several groups enjoying cookouts and picnics in the shade of the path. The breeze coming off the water added a nice relief to the hot day, although I understand this same breeze makes for a very cold wintertime. Roosevelt Island was also once home to the Smallpox Hospital, whose ruins are now being renovated into a museum.
On the way back, we entered the subway station on the island and went down several stories to below water level. It was amazing how cool this subway station was as compared to the others. I guess being under water makes quite a difference.

Around 8 p.m., we headed out for the "Ignite the Night" Macy's fireworks show. We made it part of the way to the Hudson River Park. What happens is that you just walk until you can walk no more and then just jam up real close together and wait for the show to begin, because it is almost impossible to go anywhere once you are packed in. But the fireworks show was worth the "sardine" experience it took to get to see it. I also learned an interesting fact last night. In the past, I had always thought that when something was shown "live" that it meant it was happening right then. The fireworks show was over and we had walked back to our apartment and turned on the TV and saw the "live" firework show was just getting underway. So we got to watch the show on TV that we had just seen in real life. The whole time, the word "LIVE" was in the upper corner of the TV.