New York, Part Three: Coney Island, Cultural Places and Fancy Neighbo(u)rhoods
So here we are: the final New York blog post, and it has a lot of photographs to go with it. A lot.
It feels very surreal seeing news images of the city right now - deserted, like something from a sci fi film - compared to the busy streets we walked along three weeks ago, all traffic and sirens and car horns and music. So let’s start the show with Coney Island. Mostly closed in early March, and chilly, with that pale seaside light and strange atmosphere you get when you’re somewhere usually crowded with people and noise and smells and sounds. But we were there for the New York Aquarium, as per Joe’s request.
He and Jay did a second round there while I found an Italian cafe and drank a cappuccino and made notes about our trip. Then they found me and Joe had a slice of authentic Brooklyn pizza.
Later in the week we did Park Avenue, home to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim.
We walked through lots of neighbourhoods, which was something I really wanted to do - just meander. So we found ourselves in the East Village and Bleecker Street, and subsequently inside the Magnolia Bakery. Joe had a vanilla cupcake before going into a little play area filled with small children and their nannies. There were lots of fancy little boutiques and eating places.
There was also a female park keeper who told an old man off for riding his bike too close to the parked cars. His response before riding away: ‘F*** you! And have a nice day!’
Which kind of says it all about New York really. Brash and pushy but polite at the same time. We never once felt unsafe, anywhere.
We spent an afternoon around Fifth Avenue too, amongst the skyscrapers and high end shops (and flashy car showrooms), watching office workers buying lunch from the numerous Pret a Mangers and salad bars. You could almost smell the money around there: high end hotels and bank headquarters, niche stores selling luxury bedding and art and things the mega rich might want to furnish their lives with.
And always the busy streets.
We headed to Grand Central Station - you have to, when in NYC - and looked for lunch. I’ll be honest, eating gluten free there isn’t what I expected. I thought that at the crossroads of the world, the most cosmopolitan city on the planet, there’d be a big choice. Not so. Unless I was just looking in the wrong places (entirely possible).
The station itself was stunning. Apologies for the dark photos. It was quite gloomy in there, and I haven’t edited anything, but you can still see the beautiful ceilings with the signs of the zodiac depicted in gold, and the little stars all illuminated.
And then to the New York Public Library.
Or, as I like to think of it, Heaven. More celestial ceilings and twinkling chandeliers and ornate architecture. Books for miles. And the book train - a system where requests reach the librarians on a computer system, and the books are located and placed on a conveyor belt ready for delivery to the reader. It was like something from Hogwart’s.
I could have spent hours, days in there.
But not long after, we had to pack up and head home.
Below is a picture taken from our hotel window in the evening. In the 1980s, as a kid, I used to watch the opening credits for Moonlighting, and was mesmerised by them. New York really is magical.
Not pictured (but experienced): Greenwich Village, Union Square, Times Square at night, Chelsea Market, Strand Bookstore (sigh), the Lego Store, the Subway, St Patrick’s cathedral (we lit a candle for my mum), Carrie Bradshaw’s apartment (we happened to walk past and saw tourists photographing it), and my favourite: the Rockefeller Center at night, all lit up and complete with ice rink. Like I said, magical.
What did we bring home, other than memories and so many photos (two cameras, two phones)? Lego, colouring books, new pencils, T shirts, stuffed toys, a tub of plastic snakes (Joe). A Muji dress, H&M denim shirt, Anthropologie earrings, more trinkets from Brooklyn Charm, crockery from West Elm (me). Plus other bits and pieces for a scrapbook.
Jay didn’t bring anything back. He travels light, which is just as well really.
