New York (day 4)
Ours plans today consist of seeing as much of Manhattan as possible on foot. So we need to start with a decent breakfast. We're craving something normal and kinda healthy. We aim for where we want to start our trek, somewhere in the West, maybe Chelsea or SoHo or East Village. We find a place around E 20th and 7th Avenue. The food fills a hole and we are soon off to hit the pavement.
It's very overcast today, with a chance of a storm later in the evening. So we hope to get as much covered as we can before that happens.
We head West. There are a few districts we've never even heard of (like Kips Bay) for us to see. We head over to about 3rd Ave (testing the memory here) and head North. As always plenty to see. Lots of cool food places, including a few good looking hole-in-the-wall burrito joints.
The city is exposing new angels to us from here, so there is still plenty of gawking going on, and generally looking like tourists. We make it to 59th and hang a left towards Central Park.
We walk past the horse drawn carts and get enjoyment (probably too much) out of watching a horse and a flock of pigeons take it in turns to eat from the feed bucket.
We plan a rough track through the park, aiming to see areas we didn't see last time. We stroll our way to a cool spot and sit down to rest the legs, plan some flights and do some blogging before we forget everything.
We carry on past the Boat Shed which features in Sex in the City and spot a Hawk (or Eagle) that got the cream (Squirrel). It's posing for the fans with his kill, mainly because its too heavy for it to fly away with (you'll have too look closely in the picture. Damn animals and their camouflage).
We pop out of the park on the West side, half way up by the museum. We grab an ice cream since the weather's nice enough for one and keep heading West.
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We hang another lefty down Amsterdam (another one we've not seen much of) and decide it's time to take 5 and grab a drink. We haven't tried too much of the local stuff in NY yet, so no time like the present. Not bad, but the West Coast is still kicking butt so far.
We continue wandering South as we merge onto Broadway and trying to take as many new directions as possible. We realise we've seen a few things here before so head West a block further. We grab a slice of pizza each, since it's been on the list the whole time we've been here. It's not bad! And cheap.
We stop in at a fancy looking place in Chelsea, mainly to take another break. We've nearly walked 20kms at this point.
Onwards we go, further down towards West Village. For a while the area becomes a little sketchy, but not too bad.
We head for a clothing shop Courtney has eyed off a jacket from. It's a Brooklyn based company. The shop is pretty trendy and we've realised we're now in a very trendy neighborhood. The guy in the shop let's us know that Chelsea is the new West Village - that is, the more underground and "sinful" places are now found in Chelsea instead of West Village. We then rush to go and find a sports cap shop we saw on a previous day before it closes. We make it just in time and Jeff buys an Oakland A's hat.
OK, back to trendsvillie (Greenwich and West Village) to find a place to eat. As we thought, it was easy as to find somewhere decent. A cool Mexican place is the go. We grab a couple of appetizers and beers, chill out and watch the baseball.
The weather is very strange (for NY). Very humid, and a little windy. The storm doesn't hit though and people are eating food outside now. Everyone is making the most of it given how cold it has been.
We are determined to keep ticking boxes today, so we keep heading South to get to TriBeCa. We get there, it's pretty quiet. We can't really find anything worth looking at. We've clocked up 36,420 steps (26.5kms) - we're a little obsessed with this because is about our only exercise for the trip!
We subway it home ready for our trip to Boston tomorrow.
