This morning we were back on the Subway, heading towards the Upper Eastside. The weather was a lot cooler and it was threatening rain (though Hey Google promised it wouldn't). We got off on the West side of Central Park and walked accross to the Guggenheim Museum. It is a pretty amazing building, rendered white and spiralling up from the street. Once inside it was even more spectacular, the spirals create the gallery space and invite you to wander down, taking in the wonderful art collection along the way. My favourites were the Chagall's. There was also a pretty cool installation which uses the bacteria from Chinatown to create a beautiful (sealed!) diorama. At the other end of this room is a giant ant colony, built into a monochrome, shiny space. The room is sprayed with scents of New York (the nice ones) and the ants share this aroma as well creating, a unity between the ants and us, the voyers. Sounds wanky, but it was fun.
After the gallery (and the gallery shop) we went to Central Park, just over the road. There was a little bit of drizzle (damn you google!), but nothing to stop us doing what we needed to do.
I really want to do a bike tour there, but hadn't booked, not knowing how long our gallery visit would be. We were unable to organise one for today, so wandered along the reservoir and enjoyed the peaceful space before hopping back onto the Subway and heading to the Lower Eastside. The train rides are all the same price and this was a long one, so good value.
We hopped off at Fulton Street and made our way to the South Street Seaport. It wasn't where we needed to be, but we found some nice little design shops there and bought a couple of things. We then walked along the water and finally made our way towards the start of the Brooklyn Bridge. As we were deciding if we were going the right way, an older gentleman told us we were on the right track, but not to take the stairs as he didn't want us to get mugged. We took his advice.
Walking accross the bridge is apparently a poplular thing to do. We were joined by hundreds of others. It was quite packed at times. It was a great walk, looking back towards Manhattan, becoming more and more shrouded in clouds, over to Brooklyn.
The bridge itself is a fantastic structure, a suspension bridge spanning the East River.
Once over we made our way to Pizza Lane. You gotta eat pizza in Brooklyn, right? We popped into Grimaldi's and ordered a small (giant) to share. It was pretty good and we were pretty stuffed.
We walked along the waterfront and found an art installation, a giant water vortex, by Amish Kapoor. It looked pretty scary, but very impressive. Ken was happy to have stumbled accross it. The security guard filled me in on all the technical details (there is a giant boat motor in a cage under the water!)
Finally, we made our way back to the Subway for the long trip back to 42nd St. A stop at the supermarket and we are done for the day. Drinks and snacks are in house tonight!
Steps 18,675
Kms walked 15.2
2025-02-10