Advertisement
Published: August 4th 2010
Edit Blog Post
There's a lovely walkway in New York called the Highline. It currently runs from around W 10th Street up to W 20th Street (eventually it will run up to 34th Street). The Highline is an old freight train line that used to run into the warehouses of the Meat Packing District. Well, when the meat markets closed up, the line was deserted. Eventually, someone got a brilliant idea to turn into a park.
The idea for my birthday was for my sister and I to walk the Highline Park, then head crosstown to meet my nephew, my niece and her boyfriend for dinner. Well, I goofed. I decided that we should start downtown and work our way along the Hudson to the Highline. I figured we'd walk a few blocks near the Hudson then turn up to the Highline. But I goofed. I forget how many blocks there were beneath Canal Street, and the fact that in the Village, the streets don't just run West 1st, 2nd, etc, but rather have named streets between them. So by starting near the Staten Island Ferry terminal we ended up walking a couple of miles instead of 1/2 mile. We stopped off in
the Ferry Terminal to take some photos, then walked through the park near the Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island Ferry line (which my sister referred to as "the line for sunstroke"). The line was about 3 blocks long and under full sun. I had considered taking the ferry to Ellis Island, but after looking at that line, I'm glad we decided against it. Next we headed up along the Hudson River Pathway for a bit, passing some really nice flowers then a park with these cool statues. They remind me of Monopoly, they look like they crawled out of it. We wandered through the West Village for a while, finally finding a Starbucks to get a bit of a drink. Eventually, after more and more walking we found the stairs at Gansevoort Street (no, I have no clue how to pronounce that) and climbed up to the Highline. The view is very nice and there were lots of growing things. I'm sure it must be beautiful in the spring when there are more flowers than just green plants. In some spots, the original railway ties are left in place, which gives it a funky feel, as does the fact that it
goes UNDER some buildings. And at 16th street, there is a seating area that faces uptown, with a huge window looking up 10th Ave.
Once we hit the current end of the park, we walked across town to do some shopping and were very happy that the fine folks at Filene's Basement had 3 water coolers and let us refill our water bottles. Our next step was at Madison Square Park and the naked man statue. While we were in the park we discovered another statue and then my sister met a woman who told us that the statues were part of an artist exhibition and there were a whole bunch of them around the park and also on top of some of the buildings in the area. We got a map of the statues and saw a few of the ones that were in the area as we walked up to me the others for dinner.
Dinner was at a lovely vegetarian tea shop called Franchia on Park and 35th Street. As part of their prix fix menu, you get tea, and I had this really yummy plum ice tea. When we finished dinner, we walked to
Herald Square to catch the train. Along the way we found one more naked man statue, on the Empire State Building....
Advertisement
Tot: 0.4s; Tpl: 0.018s; cc: 8; qc: 41; dbt: 0.2426s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Pat
non-member comment
Nice BD
It sounds like you had a wonderful birthday with your sister. Lots of good exercise. Love the photos.