New York City – Day 5

I had hoped that the weather forecast would prove to be wrong, but when I opened the curtains this morning I couldn’t see the river. It was overcast and the street was wet. I couldn’t tell from the 31st floor whether or not it was raining.

I spent some time trying to motivate myself to go out, and deciding what to do. I looked at a number of museums, but also looked at the list of things that I wanted to do outdoors, and even though I’m here a generous eight days, I realized that half of them are already in the past.

In the end I decided to go to DUMBO – Downtown Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, in Brooklyn across the East River. I decided to take the subway to avoid cycling in the rain, and to have a new experience. I dressed in layers with my yellow rain slicker on top, and my items that I wanted to take with me in my backpack, wrapped in plastic bags in case I got rained on.

I am able to get to the subway from the hotel without going outside. I stopped at a fare machine and was able to determine that the second card Cindy gave me also had funds on it and was able to have them transferred to a card with a new future expiry date.

Google told me to take a train, leave the train and station and walk a block to get to another subway line which doesn’t connect inside, and then transfer to the line that goes across the river to DUMBO.

My plan was to cross the river on the subway using the Manhattan Bridge for the views as represented on this map with the green arrow. But I made a mistake when I transferred and ended up following the red arrow to Williamsburg. The subway also crosses the river on the bridge going on this route so it took me a while to realize I was in the wrong place. Then it took a while to figure out what to do about it. I ended up going back to the station marked DeLancey street and following the blue arrow over to the island which was through a tunnel.

Consequently, a trip which should have been about 30 minutes by subway and would have taken about an hour on bike took an hour and a half. However, I got there in the end, and it’s all part of the adventure. I’ll do better tomorrow when I have Michael along and we use the subway again. I did end up seeing this interesting station which I would not have seen had I not taken the wrong train.

I find it much easier to navigate on the surface. Even when you don’t know the area you can use cues such as where the sun and shadows are and whether or not you can see the water. And in a place like Manhattan, where the streets are numbered, it’s very easy to quickly figure out when you’re going in the wrong direction.

As I emerged from the subway I saw a red flag on a lamp post saying DUMBO and shortly there after the distinctive industrial buildings and glimpses of the bridges and knew I was in the right place.

I’m going to blame the whole situation on the fact that I forgot to get a coffee this morning. I left the room with my mask on and headed straight down to the subway expecting to get a coffee 30 minutes later. Little did I know it would be more than 90 by the time I had one in hand.

DUMBO is a very noisy place with the subway regularly coming over the Manhattan Bridge. There’s also a lot of construction going on in the area.

Many of you will probably recognize this scene which is a very popular one on social media. I asked somebody to take my picture because a selfie just wasn’t working. Michael always thinks when I do this that the person is going to run away with my phone, but I chose someone that looked less fit than I am, and they didn’t try to run, anyway.

The waterfront is beautiful with views of the Manhattan Bridge, Manhattan, and the Brooklyn Bridge.

There are many beautiful and nicely restored industrial buildings.

There is an old carrousel that’s had a glass box built around it to protect it. It is still operable. It’s called Jane’s carousel and was built in 1922.

Empire Stores has been built inside an old industrial building. It’s partly open all the way up to the top with great views of the river and the bridges.

Just as I was finishing up looking at the carrousel it started to rain and was getting quite heavy so, as it was also time for lunch, I headed into Empire Stores to find something to eat.

Unfortunately there wasn’t any outdoor covered area to eat so I did eat indoors, but it wasn’t overly crowded, and I didn’t dawdle. My black Angus cheesesteak was absolutely delicious.

New York’s transportation system offers so many choices. I could have taken the subway back, gone to a bike share to get a bike to ride back, taken a ferry back, or my choice, walk back across the Brooklyn Bridge.

I always seem to spend an enormous amount of time finding food when I travel. It’s compounded when Michael and I are both trying to find food at once because we have different ideas of what we want to eat. I thought this QR code was a good idea. Just hold up your camera to it and will open up a webpage with the local restaurants.

It was a bit convoluted to get there, and quite sketchy in places due to construction, and lacking in signage.

Once I got to the stairs to get onto the bridge it was a 2 km walk to get to the City Hall area on Manhattan. But it was worth it with incredible views. Apparently the bridge can get so busy on nice days that one can only shuffle across, but it was comfortably empty in the misty weather today.

You could see the people in the apartments and their stuff as you walked past this building. It has incredible views, but with the potential lack of privacy on the one side, and the noise from the subway train on the Manhattan bridge on the other, I don’t think I would like to live there.

I’m not sure that it would have been much faster to drive as the cars were often at a standstill underneath the pedestrian area.

There were places that were so broad it felt more like a large pier than a bridge walkway.

There are some beautiful buildings around City Hall including the Woolworth building which was the tallest building in the world from 1913 to 1930. It is still one of the hundred tallest buildings in the US.

After walking around City Hall Park I grabbed a coffee and cookie to have in the park, and then got on the subway to go back uptown.

A lot of the subway stations, including the one under City Hall, are quite rundown.

This was a very useful board on one of the subways and was constantly updated so that the next stop was on the left-hand side and you could see how many stops there were until the one you were travelling to.

I had to transfer at Times Square to the Grand Central shuttle which was a very modern subway car that had no seating.

Michael and I met back at the hotel and then went to Café Hestia to get takeout, again. Our choices weren’t as good tonight, as they were last night, so we will try somewhere different tomorrow.

Despite the mistakes made this morning it was still another wonderful day visiting places familiar to me from social media. It was so wonderful to be able to experience them in person.