Today’s step count: 21,302 or 8.74 miles!
Now that last 3/4 miles was coming back from the show last night, but still we trekked 8 miles and wore out the subway system.
When we shared the table at the Japanese restaurant on Monday night, the guy (Jimmy) recommended we see Greenwich Village and walk the Brooklyn Bridge, so today’s plan was thanks to Jimmy.
Since we were out late and Jaime was pretty jazzed from seeing one of her favorite bands, she stayed up until around 2am, so we did not get an early start today. We headed to the subway and ended up on the wrong side. Normally we could take stairs, but we did not see any, just an elevator. I was not thrilled with taking the elevator because I had heard they were notorious for breading down, but turns out this is not the most pressing issue with NYC subway elevators. We got on and were assaulted by the worse stank we have every experienced. It was only one floor down, but we were very much on the verge of adding vomit to the unholy stank. Never ever ever take the elevator in a subway unless you are wearing full face mask scuba gear.
Jaime found a coffee shop called Coffee Rx not too far from our subway stop for Greenwich Village. It was nice to air out and we could tell as we emerged from the subway we were in a neighborhood. There was more greenery and most of the building were no more than five stories high with brownstones and stoops. We say a crowded basketball court and soon realized there was something either being filmed or a photoshoot. We needed caffeine, so we did not linger to figure it out. I had a super sweet Nutella Latte to shake things up then we headed to Washington Square Park. The park was pretty busy and is where an arch dedicated to George Washington resides.
We walked around a bit and saw the famous tables of chess players, took our pictures then sat down on a shaded bench around the fountain. Once again, I was melting. The weather tricked me with its predicted rain and high of 78 degrees, so I thought it best to wear my long capri shorts and a tank top under a t-shirt. Layers was a horrible idea. As we talked, a man approached us with a clipboard. It had a cartoon picture of a smiling woman and then in a flat voice said, “I am collecting money for Black Lives Matter and my children are missing and have been kidnapped and to fund educational projects and activities.” He might as well have said, “and a kitchen sink.” Jaime said, “No, not today,” and he proceeded to cuss us out for saying not today and not just no. Cussed out by a beggar is another check on the NYC experience list.
After that bit of fun, we decided to head out to our next stop: The Doughnut Project. Well actually, I spotted another guy coming who appeared to be asking people something before moving to the next group and I saw no point in getting cussed out twice so I suggested we skedaddle.
The Doughnut Project is a boutique bakery that has new, creative flavors daily, but they are most known for the Everything Doughnut. This does not mean everything you would expect on a doughnut like sprinkles and chopped nuts. It means the everything on an everything bagel as in sesame seeds, poppy seeds, cream cheese glaze, and garlic.
You read that right. Garlic on a doughnut. Now I had zero interest in that, but Jaime likes savory and the reviews were good so she ordered that. I got the strawberry milkshake doughnut and we split a Lemon Love Letter doughnut which was a lemon doughnut with a lemon glaze and sea salt. The strawberry was exquisite and the lemon really popped with the addition of the sea salt.
I tried the Everything Doughnut and it was good! The garlic was really subtle and worked surprisingly well with the sweet. I don’t know if I could eat a whole one, but I was pleasantly shocked. Being women of a certain age, we decided finding a bathroom would be advantageous. The park had some, but we thought we might beat out the elevator stank in that location, so I asked the cashier at The Doughnut Project if there were any public bathrooms (hoping she would offer us the employees’) and she told us the Christopher Street Starbucks had one. We headed that way and I couldn’t quite put my finger on why Christopher Street sounded familiar.
We found the Starbucks and ordered egg bites to get the bathroom code. An unhoused person came out of the bathroom before us and we got a nice preview of how the subway elevator stank is born. We are having a great time, but I would NOT recommend NYC to people with high sensitivity to smells.
Our next destination was the 9-11 Memorial. We headed towards a subway station as it started to rain, so I pretty much was not paying attention to my surroundings as we headed down the Christopher Street Station. That is when I started to think Christopher Street might have something to do with the Stonewall Inn which is where the riot happened that started the modern Gay Rights Movement. Now that we weren’t in the rain, Jaime got a better look around and realized this station did not go where we needed, so we headed back up to the surface and directly across the narrow street was the sign marking this as the Stonewall Inn National Monument. I insisted we see the bar, so we walked into the little park and I took a picture of it. We did not go in since we were already heading somewhere else and the construction out front made it look iffy if it was open.
Once we found the right station, we took it to the World Trade Center. The station is like the Port Authority where it looks like you are in a mall. This place was called the Oculus. It was two large, white shells that came together at the top with several narrow pieces coming out the top. It made me think of eyelids closing and the lashes intertwining.
We went to the actual memorials which were the squares of the foundation of each tower with a short wall around engraved with all the people who perished in the buildings. The wall surrounded what looked like a deep hole that was probably the original foundation depth with a smaller square hole in the middle. Water poured from the walls and drained into the smaller square in the middle. It was a simple, yet poignant design.
Jaime spotted a global shaped metal sculpture, so we headed up to what was Liberty Park. The sculpture originally sat in a fountain between the Twin Towers and was found int he rubble a bit banged up, but still in tact. A fitting tribute since it represented world peace.
Directly next to this was a chapel dedicated to St. Nicholas. As someone raised Protestant, I am not familiar with what each Saint is the protector of. The chapel was all white marble and had paintings of the Saint, Jesus, and Mary all over in an early Renaissance style. Even the door to enter the chapel was made of marble.
Now, it may not be very tolerant of me, but there was a loud blustery guy who just annoyed the living crap out of me in there. We were treating this chapel beside the site of a huge tragedy with solemnity and respect. This guy though was talking loudly about how he could have built it in 18 months instead of the 4 or 5 years it took. Then he asked if a video display was showing St. Nicholas. The security guard said yes and the guy proceeds to complain he never is sure because the guy looks different in every picture. (All the pictures are of paintings by artists done years, decades, and maybe centuries after he died. They are not photographs!) Then to top it all off, the video display changed and the guy lost his mind. He kept loudly asking if anyone saw it change and marveling that it could show different pictures, and they should sell these in the gift shop.
It was your standard TV or computer monitor with a slide show of different paintings. This was a dumb guy who just had to hear himself talking all the time.
From there, Jaime spotted another old church with a graveyard out front and almost all the headstones were completely weathered. We marveled at how this survived being so close to the towers. After waiting the three minutes they were closed (really, a guard came out and said they were closed for the next 3 minutes.) Went into St. Pauls. I took a seat and Jaime went around to read the memorials to people who had passed in the 1800’s.
Once she joined me, a docent came over to see if we had any questions. She asked where we are from and we said Indiana. Then she asked if we were familiar with Christian denominations. I reiterated we are from the Midwest, so yes. The fact of the day she gave us was George Washington attended this church, so that was exciting. We also asked if walking to the shore where we could see the Statue of Liberty was feasible from this location and she explained how, so Jaime found that we could go one direction and walk on the Brooklyn Bridge, then go back across the tip of Manhattan to see the Statue of Liberty from Battery Park.
We took a subway to the end of the line for Brooklyn Bridge. As we were in the station and I saw a sign saying J Z Brooklyn Bridge. I wondered out-loud to Jaime if that is where Jay-Z got his name since he is from Brooklyn. According to Google it was along with paying tribute to a mentor. A good part of our morning had been hazy from the Canadian wildfires smoke, but it had cleared up for a sunny day. We started up the path to get on the bridge. I was feeling hot, sweaty, and cranky. The path was packed with other tourists and vendors of corny souvenirs. We were just going up to the first section. I was happy we did, because since we were now over water (East River) we had the most splendid breeze. I was finally able to feel human again. The subways are nice for getting around, but the stations are like ovens, there’s a bunch of stairs, and we had raced up and down stairs more than once today to catch a train.
Our next stop was Battery Park which had a view of the Statue of Liberty. We were not interested in a long boat ride today, so that was good enough. Plus, we liked the idea of another breeze off the water. It turns out the New York branch of the National Archives was across the street, but since we were doing so much today and are visiting the library tomorrow, we left that little nerd haven off our list.
We had a nice time sitting in the park and cooling off before heading back to the Christopher Street Station. We were backtracking for dinner and to look at music stores for souvenirs for Jaime’s kids.
One of our essential NYC experiences was having a slice of NYC -style pizza and Bleeker Street Pizza had a reputation for being one of the best!. I placed our order, which was a mistake because the guy could not understand me over the display with my soft voice, so Jaime got her cheese and chicken/bacon slices, but I only got my cheese slice and I had to let the cashier know we also needed two garlic knots. One slice ended up being filling enough. There was so much cheese I had a hard time separating the cheese that had melted from the plate. New Yorkers have every right to brag about their pizza. The garlic knots came with a chunky marinara for dipping that was to die for.
I do not know if the neighborhoods are this small or if we happened to be at a border where three meet, because as we did our last leg of walking for the day we went from Greenwich Village, to the West Village , and in to Chelsea. Bleecker Street is know for its songwriters, so Jaime wanted to find something for her kids. Our first stop was the Music Inn. It was an eclectic store full of eclectic instruments and people. Every stringed instrument you can think of and plenty you’ve probably never thought of hung from the ceilings and walls. Jaime’s son is a drummer so we wend down a narrow stair case to the percussion section where drums, bells, tamberines, etc. filled the space. It felt like stepping back in time to a group of kids who were still high from Woodstock.
(Everything after this got erased and I had to rewrite it. I’m sure if it would have survived I’d be accepting the Nobel for Literature. Please accept this serviceable, but surely lesser version.)
Next we went to Record Runner, a shop that had been run by John for 44 years. You had to knock to be let in. I don’t have a record player, so I just lightly browsed while Jaime scoured and emerged with a stack of records. She had asked John where to find some artists which served to endear her to him. While she checked out, she asked him what was close-by we should see. He took us outside with some photos to point out where the cover was shot for Bob Dylan’s second album. Then he explained a lot of Sex and the City landmarks were close by and that some celebs live in the neighborhood like Bradley Cooper. Now I wish this were foreshadowing a Bradley sighting, but the only celebrity we saw was when we headed to the subway and got a look at the jersey of the basketball photo shoot we’d seen earlier. We looked him up and it was Jalen Brunson of the Knicks. It’s not much of a celeb sighting when you have to look them up, but it’s all we got.
We walked through the neighborhoods and looked at the entrance to Carrie Bradshaw’s apartment, then walked to Magnolia Bakery that also sometimes appeared in the series.
I was pooped, so I asked if we could go back to the hotel. It was past 7pm, but felt like we were heading in at 2pm. It was easy to believe we had walked 8miles.
Travels with Freckles 