New York Diary Day 8 – Part 1

The view above is what we woke up to every morning in Brooklyn. It was quiet a view. If you stuck your head out the window you could just about see the Manhattan Bridge too. Now I’m all for independent businesses over chains but this hotel had that view and waffles for breakfast from a machine that sounded like Jimmy Carr laughing. That view though.

Our first stop was the Staten Island ferry. A free ferry ride over to Staten Island and back. The weather wasn’t quite with us that day. Overcast for the most part. There was a spotlight on the Statue of Liberty which was nice and some nice light on the ferry but nothing on the skyline. A shame as we’d been spoilt by the early morning light from our hotel window. You can’t have it all. The ferry was great though. There seemed to be a lot of people getting on but you never had to fight for a view. We found a space out back that was open to the elements and it felt more like riding the Mersey Ferry. I liked that. I didn’t like our navy escort ship complete with massive machine gun on the front though. That was a little scary.

We said hello to the Italian Sausage Hero, because he’s the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now and headed off to East Village.

East Village was nice. Very trendy. Expensive hipster stores and cool cafes. Basically food I can’t eat type cafes. I think I had a fruity pancake and while I was tempted to brush the fruit off I gave it a go. I lived.

We saw the worlds smallest park. Seriously, what the what? Why is this a thing?

There was some clothes on the floor that had either been thrown out of a window in a fit of passion/rage or someone exploded in the night. Maybe they were from this ultra minimalist wedding store?

It was a glorious afternoon in East Village. Gorgeous light and I was excited because we had pre-booked tickets for Top of the Rock at sunset. It was a bit of a gamble given the way the morning went but if things stayed as they were we were in for a treat. I’ll do those photos in a second post because we went up and you’ll never believe what happened next!

I do not understand this sign.

After Top of the Rock we tried to find our way to some food and go stuck in human form traffic. We didn’t know the store at the time but it was Saks, Fifth Avenue. The whole store front was lit up with an amazing light display and the entire pavement was lit up with phones capturing said performance. It was nice to see but so many people.

We cut our losses in Manhattan and headed to Junior’s Cheesecake place in Brooklyn for tea. I found it funny that our UK burgers are more insane than NYC ones, at least the ones I had but then I have them plain. Still, cheesecake was immense. Twice the height of UK cheesecake. So good!

So that was 30th December. A great day out. Much better than the rainy one in Soho.