RIDING ON THE E TRAIN – PART ONE

This is the train that next to the F train is the subway line that I take the most.

If you happen to be visiting New York City , chances are that you’ll be using this subway line a lot .

It’s the E train that starts at Jamaica Center in Queens and goes to its final stop in Lower Manhattan at the World Trade Center Station .

As I’m only going ftom Jamaica Center down to 34th Street and Penn Station , this post is going to be in two parts.

The E train is an express train, but unlike some of the other subway lines, it doesn’t go to Brooklyn or The Bronx.

It’s just from Queens and Manhattan .

One word of caution though.

On the weekends and late at night, the E train runs local, meaning it’s going to stop everywhere due to the infamous “track work” that happens on every subway line in the city.

You’d think that all this “track work” being done would make the service faster and the tracks nicer.

Nope, same old train tracks but that’s another story.

Now, let’s say you want to go to the city from JFK or JFK to the city.

This is the train that gets you there .

Just get off at Suthphin Boulevard – JFK stop, and believe ne, you’ll know when you get there.

Follow the other travellers with their luggage.

If you want to go to the other airport, LaGuardia, take the E to the Roosevelt Avenue station, walk upstairs and take the bus out there .

Remrmber to use your Metro Card that you brought for the subway.

You can use it on the bus as well .

You say that you’re taking the bus or an Amtrak train and not a plane?

The E train can get you to Port Authority and one of the largest train terminals in the United States , Pennsylvania Station or Penn Station for short.

Get off the train at 42nd St for Port Authority and 34th Street for Penn Station .

Now since this is a 30 Plus Teams Tour , of course you’re going to go to either a New York Knicks basketball game or a New York Rangers hockey game at Madison Square Garden .

The E train will take you right there.

Get off at Penn Station , you’ll see the signs for the place that calls itself, “the world’s most famous arena.”

Simple right?

Many of you will want to pay your respects at the 9-11 Memorial site.

The E train will get you there also.

It’s the last stop on the E train and the stop still reads World Trade Center .

It didn’t change after 9-11 .

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SEPTEMBER 11 – NEVER FORGET

WHAT IF???

Now you might think that the Sports Diva spends a lot of time watching and attending sporting events in some city in the United States or Canada and not doing anything else.

You might be wrong.

It seems like it, but no I don’t .

As I’m retired with no children and no significant other , I spend a lot of time reading other people’s blogs .

I came across one of my favorite blogs, from Tausha, who’s blog is called The Globe Getter.

It’s a blog I think you should check out when you get a chance .

In her post, she was lamenting the fact that there were things that she referred to as ” her biggest travel regrets ” .

Now that I’m almost 66 years old , there are some things that I , too , regret .

Some of them aren’t travel related and I don’t refer to them as “regrets.”

I call them, my “what ifs ” .

What if I have had children , would I have been a good mother or given the fact that I was always traveling, would I have been a neglectful mother?

What if I hadn’t made the decision to leave home and move to Boston the first time ?

What if I had stayed in LosAngeles and never have moved to Las Vegas ?

What if I had continued to work for the airlines, would I have visited a lot more countries than the ones that I visited?

What if I hadn’t attended college and studied Sports Journalism ?

There are a lot of “what ifs ” in my life , and if I spent most of my life worrying about them, I’d be a real nervous wreck right about now, and sorry , life is too short and beautiful to think about all of my “what ifs”.

Given the fact that I’ve survived a heart attack and a mini stroke , I’m going to concentrate on the things that I can control, and not look back at all the “what ifs ” in my life .

Besides, as long as the good Lord allows me to , there’s a lot more 30 Plus Teams Tours to go on .

MY VIDEO OF GOING TO A BASEBALL GAME AT YANKEES STADIUM.

RIDING THE D TRAIN

I often take this train that goes from 205th Street in the Bronx, through Manhattan , and finally all the way to Brooklyn in Coney Island.

It is one of the most widely used trains on the New York City subway system.

Today, I’m taking this train from the Rockefeller Center Station at 47-50 Streets all the way up to the Bronx.

My stop is going to be 161st Street and River Avenue , now known as Rivera Avenue after former New York Yankees star, Mariano Rivera , to Yankee Stadium .

There is another Yankees game going on, so the station and train is more crowded than it usually is .

This train is an express train, which means that it skips many stops, mostly in Manhattan .

After it gets to 59th Street at the Columbus Circle station, it goes express and doesn’t stop until the train reaches 125th Street in Harlem.

The train might be crowded and the seats are uncomfortable , but you will be using this train a lot if you come to New York City .

WALKING AROUND MONUMENT PARK

Monument Park is a park located in the New York City boro of The Bronx .

You won’t find this park located on the list of New York City parks, though.

However, it’s just as popular as Central Park, maybe even more popular .

Many people don’t know about this park, but many people do, and most of them aren’t from New York City .

It’s free to enter this park but there’s a catch.

To get to Monument Park, you have to have a ticket.

Not just any kind of ticket , a ticket to a baseball game .

Monument Park is located inside of Yankee Stadium, the home of one of the most famous baseball teams in North America, the New York Yankees .

It’s located right in the middle of center field.

If your 30 Plus Teams Tour of New York City just happens to include a Yankees baseball game, I would advise you to get to Yankee Stadium early to not only watch the Yankees and their opponents take batting practice but to walk around Monument Park, which is designed in a circle,and look at all the plaques honoring former Yankee players .

If you happen to be a huge baseball fan, you’ll enjoy seeing the plaques and retired numbers of former Yankees greats like Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig , and Joe DiMaggio, who most people know as being Marilyn Monroe’s ex husband.

Younger baseball fans will enjoy seeing the plaques and retired numbers of the Yankees players who are known as “The Core Five”, Andy Petitte, Jorge Posada, Bernie Williams, Mariano Rivera , and Derek Jeter.

Right in the middle of Monument Park, there is a huge plaque of the man that Yankee fans affectionately know as “The Boss”.

(Non Yankees fans know him by some other not too nice name, by the way.)

He is the late owner of the team, George Steinbrenner.

You don’t have to be a baseball fan to enjoy Monument Park .

There are plaques commemorating the visits of Pope John Paul the Sixth and Nelson Mandela .

Like many major league baseball parks in the country , you’ll see a plaque with tge number 42 on it, which was the number worn by Jackie Robinson, who was the first player to intergrate major league baseball.

There is another plaque in Monument Park that stands apart from the other plaques.

Many people want to see this one just to pause and reflect.

They aren’t all baseball fans either.

It’s the plaque for 9-11 .

RIDING THE 4,5,AND NUMBER 6 TRAINS

No, I haven’t lost my mind.

The title of this blog post is correct.

I’m actually taking three subway trains.

I know what y’all must be thinking.

How can you take two trains in one day, let alone three?

New Yorkers have been doing this since the subways have been in existence .

This is basically part of our DNA.

It’s a little foreign to tourists and to those who don’t take the subways that often, if at all.

But to those of us who take the trains more times than we care to imagine, taking more than one train is as common as changing your underwear.

Officially, it’s known as transferring from one subway train to another.

Yeah, it’s basically changing trains as it were.

This is how I did it a few days ago.

I had to get to the Bowling Green train station .

I was no where near the station.

I took the number 6 train, which begins in The Bronx, goes through Manhattan and ends at the Brooklyn Bridge stop.

The number 6 train is a local train, which means it makes all stops from The Bronx all the way down to the Brooklyn Bridge Station.

However , it didn’t stop where I needed to get to.

What did I do?

I changed trains and took the number 5 train, which also begins in the Bronx, goes through Manhattan , and ends in Brooklyn.

The number 5 train stops at Bowling Green, where I met some friends, who live on Staten Island .

Being friends of the Sports Diva , I don’t need to tell you where we going, but I am anyway .

We were doing our own 30 Plus Teams Tour of New York City, which meant going to a Yankees baseball game .

(The game got cancelled but that’s a story for another day.)

Coming back from the Bowling Green station, my friends and I had to get to Yankee Stadium .

The number 5 would get us to The Bronx, but not the part of the borough that we needed to get to.

Say hello to the third train that I had to take, the number 4.

Like the number 5 train, the number 4 train is an express train that also goes through Brooklyn, Manhattan and The Bronx.

Together, these three trains carry the most passengers on the New York City subway system.

If you happen to be on Lexington Avenue in New York City , you’ll be taking one of these trains, no matter where on the avenue you are.

By the end of your own 30 Plus Teams Tour of New York City , you’ll be taking the subways a lot .

Maybe you’ll get to be an expert on this transferring thing just like a native New Yorker .