B and I woke early and walked across the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan. The bridge was a beautiful site itself and it looked different from most bridges I've seen. I guess being one of the oldest bridges in the U.S. gives it character. I loved the neo-Gothic architectural style of the bridge and the nice, scenic view of the city as we walked across the bridge.
In Manhattan, we went to check out the High Line, an elevated, linear park. There were other tourists and locals strolling along the High Line and taking pictures. The whole scene felt very urban and artistic.
View on the High Line
Bird feeders on the High Line
Since we were already in the Chelsea neighborhood, we explored a bit while sipping on our morning coffee. We walked through the Chelsea market, which was underground. There were many neat, little shops and food places, but we had a lot of places to hit up on our itinerary so we made our way down back towards lower Manhattan.
Pretty lights in the Chelsea Market
A lot of restaurants had their health inspection grade displayed at the front of their stores, but aren't most 'dirtier' places where the good food is at? B and I were skeptical of grade A Chinese restaurants...
I didn't really feel like it was worth it even though it was free to ride the ferry. The ferry didn't go close to Lady Liberty at all. Guess you have to pay to be on those boats that go really close to her.
Then we walked back up to see Wall Street. Not sure why I felt like buildings in New York seem so much taller and more massive than buildings in SF. Wall Street was crowded, as expected, and was flooded with tourist groups especially near the Wall Street bull.
Cool design outside of a church on Wall Street
Next on our itinerary was the MoMa, which had many floors of art. There were some really famous work there by artists like van Gogh and Picasso, but we didn't spend too long in the museum since we wanted to go to the United Nations building.Unfortunately, we didn't make it to the UN before it closed, but we did make it on time to see the sunset at the Top of the Rock, which is the observation deck at the top of the GE building at the Rockefeller Center.
Sunset and view of the city (and the Empire State building)
Admission was $25 for adults, which I felt was kind of pricy for the view, but B and I took as many pictures as we could to make it worth the $25.
Ice skating rink at the Rockefeller Center
We found our way back to Times Square and chilled there until pretty late at night since we had a 6am flight to catch. The night train we were supposed to take back to our hosts' place in Brooklyn didn't come, which kind of screwed us over. Our hosts had warned us about the sometimes unreliable night trains in NY. We had to take different trains back to Brooklyn, but we managed to get back to grab our luggage. Since we got back to Brooklyn so late, we took a cab to the airport to catch our red-eye flight.
It was a really short visit, but B and I felt like we took root there a little since we got to meet some local NY couchsurfers during our stay, which made it different from a regular touristy trip. NYC has a lot of creative energy, artistic grungy character, beautiful urban landscapes, beautiful people, and amazing food/entertainment. I would love to go back someday or maybe even live there.