NYC Day 2: Brooklyn, Lower Manhattan, and Central Park
Despite the late night Broadway show before, we were up early and determined to hit the rest of the list. So first up was Brooklyn. It took about 40 min to get to the Bagel Store on Bedford Ave between 2 subway lines and less than mile of walking.
Rainbow bagel with funfetti smear: perfection.
Like a kid in a candy store! (or a cake store! haha) That bagel was legit like eating cake since they use cake batter in the smear. It was all my dreams come true! lol and even though it wasn’t the cheapest bagel in the world, around 6.50 it wasn’t bad and their other bagels were a bit cheaper and just as yummy looking.
The Bedford Ave store put is in an amazing position for our next destination of the Brooklyn Bridge. It was just a short walk through the super cool culture haven that is Williamsburg to the base of the Williamsburg Bridge. (also beautiful in its own right) And from there a cheap ferry ride over to the Brooklyn Bridge.
Finally seeing some bits of blue sky and sun peek through after all the rain the day before! Here comes the ferry!
After you get off at the ferry stop, check the cool park area around. Lots of green walking paths and you can get this stellar shot of lower Manhattan!
And of course from the ferry dock you get a great glimpse of the bridge to come.
Starting out on the uphill climb for the bridge.
Even more blue sky! This may have been one of my favorite sites on the whole NYC tour. I love the architecture of the bridge and the history.. which is why there’s about 100 photos of it to follow..
The Brooklyn Bridge was completed in 1883 and is the 3rd oldest bridge connecting Manhattan to surrounding areas. The first, King’s bridge has been demolished, and the 2nd oldest carries a water main aqueduct and is inaccessible to pedestrians or vehicles. So basically this is the oldest bridge there you can cross. It is also considered one of the oldest suspension bridges and at the time it was built was 50% longer than any other suspension bridge in existence. That is of course, because it is a hybrid bridge with both suspension and cable stayed bridge techniques. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964.
My favorite bit of interesting history is that when designing the bridge, they added in lots of secret compartments which the city rented out in order to fund it. Some of those were used as wine “cellars” because they stayed a consistent 60 degrees.
Even though she looks a bit small, you can easily see Lady Liberty our on Ellis Island from the Brooklyn Bridge.
Another great photo spot. Important to note that if you want photos without 1,0000 other strangers in your shots, the earlier you get there the better. I think we were there around 10 and it was definitely picking up with field trippers and sight seers alike.
Looking over at the other beautiful Manhattan Bridge.
One last shot with our flag flying high and bright. Nothing like visiting some of American’s beautiful historic landmarks to inspire some patriotism.
Once we were off the bridge it was another short walk to Ground Zero, the 9/11 Memorial.
2 of my fave. sky scrapers from the trip that we passed along the way.
I really loved the memorial. I can’t really imagine a more respectful way to recognize the events that occurred on 9.11.2001. We all remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when the twin towers were struck and will never forget those who lost their lives to that terrible act of terrorism.
Even though it was one of the more crowded areas we came across in NYC, everyone was very somber and respectful which was wonderful to see.
Then time for our last subway adventure when we learned just how important it is to observe ALL the facts that Google Maps points out. Ie. if it only says get on the C line, only get on the C line because if you get on the A line which yes… goes in the same direction, you may just have gotten on the express which will take you 8 stops passed the one you needed to get off at. Thank goodness we figured it out in the subway station so our $3 bucks were still good and we just hoped on the C to go back a few stops. Added maybe 20-30 minutes to our transit time but otherwise.. not too difficult to get from lower Manhattan to mid Central Park.
Because now it was Central Park time! First up we wanted to check out the Loeb boat house and Bow Bridge.
Such a peaceful and beautiful area! We discussed a possible romantic boat ride together but decided to not. haha (which turned out to be a solid idea as we DEF would not have had time)
Most of the places we wanted to see was as the center of Central Park and the hotel Watson was at the SW corner. (We still needed to go back and grab out bags we’d checked there for the day)
The Alice in Wonderland statue! There was a solid amount of people waiting to have their photo taken here so I just decided to grab a shot between modelers and move onto the next site. Very cool (and large!) statue though and pretty close to the boathouse area. Definitely worth checking out if you’re in the area!
And you know I couldn’t NOT check out Balto although he was a bit further from the center, he was still pretty on the way as we headed south though the park.
Here comes the exciting part as these next 2 photos I essentially took at a run. We realized that the absolute latest train we could take in order to get back in time to catch the 7:00 ferry to Block Island… left at 1:20. and ya we were still at the Balto statue at 12:40 deep in Central Park. haha at this point nothing would get us back to the hotel for our bags faster than going through the park… so walk/run we did.
Finally a beautiful day and we were running to escape the city! Back at the hotel it took all of 3 minutes to recover our bags and then google was saying the fastest way to Grand Central (1 mile) was by car/ taxi for a 10 minute drive. OF COURSE all the taxis near our hotel were taken so we ran along the side walks (Katie dashing into the street to check for taxi cabs like a mad woman) and finally the right taxi cab found us. Of course he heard us say CENTRAL PARK instead of Grand central station so he took us like 5 minutes out of the way but he more than made up for it by completely disregarding the traffic laws and other drivers on the road, thus getting us to the station with about 10 minutes before our train left. Luckily we had used the apps and bought our tickets from the cab so now we only had to figure out what platform it was leaving from.
COMMENCE both of us running around Grand Central, plowing down people like mad women but thankfully we were dropped off on the closer side of grand central. We made it to our train with about 5 minutes to spare and at that point I rewarded myself with a famous NYC Black & white cookie (purchased from the bagel store) and relaxed on the journey back to New Haven.
BUT the excitement did NOT stop there! OH NO cause the connecting train we’d planned on turned out to be an unholy expensive AMTRAK train and NOT the Shoreline east train even though it was on their schedule. That coupled with a ticketing agent telling us the next train wouldn’t leave for another hour had us in PANIC mode. We checked everything from bus schedules to Uber prices but just when we gave into our defeat by purchasing Sbarro pizza (the worst pizza ever) we discovered the ticketing guy was WRONG and there was a train departing only 30 minutes later than we had expected. So rush we did and home we got just in time to throw more bags and be on our way to our next destination!
So there you have it my NYC experience, a bit of doom & gloom, to glorious broadway, to bagels in Brooklyn, sunshine in Central Park, and plowing down people in Grand Central. Certainly an adventure I won’t forget
Costs of the day:
Rainbow bagel with funfetti shmear: something like $6.50. I believe it was a dollar or 2 more than the normal bagels.
black & white cookie also from the bagel store: $3
Ferry from Williamsburg to Brooklyn Bridge: $2.5 pp
All activities were free today
oh! except for the wild taxi ride which ended up around $7 pp
The trains to get back was the same as day before: $24.75
And of course the terrible Sbarro pizza was like $6 but a girls gotta eat.
Total for the day: $49.75 just under 50
Miles walked: around 5.5 with almost about half of that just in Central Park.
