I'm finally catching up to myself with the blogging. Here goes:
July 1The weekend after we returned from our honeymoon, Scott thought we would just stay home and relax. When I heard that Sky and Anna had plans to walk Manhattan, something we'd planned for over a year, I had to nix the staying at home and join them for a little stroll. The plan was to "Walk Manhattan" from tip to tip - 220th st to Battery Park.
Google Pedometer (you'll have to zoom to see our route) says it is about 14 miles. So we took the train all the way up, which took about an hour, and realized that the end of the line didn't quite go as far as we needed to go because of weekend subway construction. So we got on a bus that would take us all the way up across the river so we could officially start our walk of manhattan.
At 215th street we stopped to climb some stairs, though I didn't climb them since I knew there were still hundreds of streets left to go. I think we were just excited to get started though. At 207th st. we came accross the subway station where we exited. Whew it felt like we were making some progress at least. I saw a street anqtiques vendor with some turquoise beads I liked, so I made my friends buy them for me. Aren't I nice? I felt I needed to own some adventure beads. Then we stopped in at a drug store for water and ring pops. I'm not sure why Anna thought we needed those, but she insisted that we did. The only ones we could find were Care Bear ring pops. It made me very nostalgic, I remember watching Care Bear cartoons when I was a kid. We tried to find some little doll or thing that could be used so we could take a picture of it on our adventures, like Flat Stanley, but we didn't manage.
I felt like a real New York kid when we came upon a hydrant that was spewing little jets of water. We stopped to play in it. The weather that day couldn't have been better, warm but not hot and breezy, perfect. We thought there were a few things we wanted to see along the way, but we hadn't planned very well, so we didn't know where these things were. I think Anna wanted to see a church that has the largest gardens or land or something in the U.S. We passed a few churches and pretended that they were the right ones.
We thought that perhaps we'd do something fun like price a head of lettuce every 20 streets to see how the price changed, but I think we forgot about it after 10 streets. It was very interesting to see how things changed along the way. Like a spectrum or gradient of wealth. The closer to Midtown the closer to money and the taller the buildings.
We wanted to get food that was specific to each neighborhood, but when we asked someone and they told us the best place was behind us, we just couldn't back track, so we stopped for some bbq and enjoyed the break at 166th street. Up in the higher streets there seems to be more of a community, with street vendors and families all wandering around. I saw a guy who had a little shopping cart vending business going on. He had a juice press and he'd sell you fresh fruit juice. We thought it looked good, but we were too full from lunch, so we kept going. We introduced Sky and Anna to the street ice cream carts. They're all over in Jersey City. It's not really ice-cream. It's more like gelato or sorbet with a little bit of creaminess to it. They sell it to you in little dixie cups for a dollar.
We paused at Columbia to check out the campus. It's very beautiful, I'd never been there. The grounds have some nice sculptures and a nice neighborhood-y feel. After that we decided we should pick up the pace since we weren't quite half way and it was getting late. We hoofed it down to Central Park where we paused at 60th street for Anna to change her shoes. I couldn't believe she had worn flip-flops the entire way. So she changed into sneakers and we got about 5 streets further starting to complain about various aches and pains when Sky decided he wanted to take a picture of the pond in Central Park. At that point they realized that his camera had gone missing, and must have been left at the shoe changing place. Sky and Anna jogged off to try to get the camera before it was taken. When we met them 20 minutes later hopping out of a cab, they told us that they'd gotten to the bench to find a note under a rock. It said "If you can describe the camera, call this number..." So they called and some guy answered and told them to come meet him. Sky was very glad to recover the camera since his dad had given it to him, and well, it's just nice to get things back. So on we went trucking on down to Korea Town. We paused there for some Pink Berry, my new favorite dessert. and kept going until we reached Battery Park. It was pretty dark by then, but we felt like we had conquered Manhattan. We saw a guy catch a pretty big fish and decided we would catch a cab home. No more walking! Phew, anyway it was a good and very satisfying day.
Brian, a friend of Scott's from his lab, told us about this website
http://www.newyorkcitywalk.com/ when he heard about our adventure. I was pleasantly surprised to find that this guy who has walked every street in Manhattan, is from New Mexico. I e-mailed him to see if he'd found any good NM food, but he's had no luck either. I'm still searching. Perhaps if we walk enough it we'll find it.
We also managed to fit in a trek across the Brooklyn bridge to some excellent pizza and some more Sing Star karaoke. We had a wonderful time and now we just need a way to get from Denver to New York quickly and easily. Anyone who has an extra jet plane lying around should send one my way. 
