Friday
We set off from Brooklyn for the ultimate
tourist experience of a cruise on the Hudson River and around the Statue of
Liberty. Turned out it was us, a couple of locals and about 300 Chinese
visitors who are very keen on all things democratic but are still mastering the
fine arts of queuing, photography in crowded spaces and listening to the
guide…bit of a bunfight really!
Uptown for a second –and this time
successful - attempt at the Guggenheim Museum. The Frank Lloyd Wright
snail-like building is absolutely astounding with its light-filled, circular
ramp to the 7th level and a red Calder mobile bobbing from the
ceiling. We loved a couple of the galleries but the abstracts and
expressionists had us scratching out heads.
Next some more research for Iona’s uni
exchange and down to the area around New York University in Greenwich Village.
The heat, the Chinese and all the kulture had so exhausted us that we slept on
the Washington Square lawn before retreating back to Brooklyn for another Ample
Hills ice-cream…and we weren’t the only ones with that bright idea!!
In the evening the two of us took up Denis’
recommendation and walked down the road to the Café Cubana, our first
experience of Cuban food and $6 lime daiquiris. Loved the chicken with mango
salsa, the Havana décor and the daiquiris…though nothing a few thousand litres
of water the next day couldn’t fix.
Saturday
Brooklyn has a great Saturday grower’s
market where our breakfast-on-the-run comprised a delicious bun and quality
coffee (yay about time). We also loaded up on fruit and veg, including three
punnets of perfect raspberries for $10.
Andrew and I took fresh watermelon and
grapes with us to do a sweltering walk across the Brooklyn bridge over to
Manhattan. Great views all the way and not too punishing distance-wise though a
few too many dopey tourists and gung-ho cyclists for my liking.
The new-ish High Line walk we did
afterwards was much more local but also provided great city views and people
watching. Built along an old raised subway line along the west side of the
lower-midtown, it’s a great example of clever eco design and urban
regeneration. Some really stylish and no doubt pricey new apartments overlook
it.
In the early evening Denis took us to
Williamsburg, the newly trendy part of Brooklyn, where all the edgiest and most
interesting eateries, bars and boutiques are to be found. We dined at a great
place called St Anselm’s (the patron saint of steak?). Andrew and I both had an
outstanding “butcher’s steak” for a mere US $15 a head.
Sunday
We’d pre-booked tickets online to visit the
9/11 memorial, which opened on the 10th anniversary last September,
and so turned up at our appointed timeslot on yet another hot, sultry New York
day. Predictably, a 20-minute security regime followed before we reached the
site itself.
The black marble memorial had seemed a bit
austere on TV but was actually beautiful in its simplicity. Two huge, square
pools cover the exact footprints of the north and south towers, each engraved
with the names of victims around the edge. Within each square is a 30-metre
fountain descending into the earth. There are no other plaques or political
statements or explanations, just the 2,900 odd names themselves, including one
of a woman “and her unborn child”.
There’s also a tree, the only one to
survive the collapse of the twin towers, which has been nurtured back to health
and replanted nearby with the financial support of the Bavarian Government.
We then returned to Dana and Denis’
apartment in Brooklyn for a delicious Caribbean lunch that Denis had picked up
from a nearby hole in the wall. We briefly saw Dana’s Dad and mother-in-law who
had dropped Sydney back from a sleepover tired and imperious but as gorgeous as
ever. Then it was time to say our
goodbyes and Dana drove us to Newark Airport in New Jersey for our flight to
Frankfurt. We’ll miss you guys!
