Urban Daughter and I are back from New York City and it proved to be another week filled with fascinating sights and experiences, some of which we planned and others that presented themselves in the way that they do in that town. We walked a lot because the star of New York City, to us, is the street. Our devices suggested we walked nearly 60 miles in seven days. We walked from the Village to the upper east side and back once (over 27,000 steps that day) and took the subway the next time we went even higher on that side. It’s our first week-long trip that we didn’t use Uber or a cab (except for the transport back to the airport on the final day — a luxury we needed by then).
We had plans, of course, and I’ll get to those in a later article, but we really intended to have some slower time and we found it. Some of that felt more necessary when Urban Daughter seemed to catch a cold. Unfortunately, we learned when we got home that we’d both brought an unwelcome souvenir home: We both had COVID and shared it with Urban Woman. Thankfully, we are all better now, though it hit pretty hard. Masking in crowded places is still a thing and we wish we’d considered it more.
One of the first things I looked for was closed sidewalks. I promised to fact-check myself when I said in a recent article that, unlike downtown Knoxville, New York City does not close sidewalks without a path for pedestrians. Well, it’s true. We saw sides of buildings and tops of buildings being worked on, entire buildings under construction, work going under sidewalks and streets and never once was there not a way to keep on walking. We’re talking tall buildings.
The shelters or tunnels actually give some cover from the rain and heat and a number of them seem mostly permanent. Are they pretty? Not usually, though some are dressed up a bit. But pedestrians are safe and accounted for. I’m going to say it again: We should not be closing sidewalks in downtown Knoxville.
Also traffic related and spotted on the street: An inexplicable billowing set of smoke stacks in the middle of the road. My favorite sighting though, may have been the cone placed on top of the car in a no-parking zone. The spot was blocked off for filming the next morning, one of several times we saw that. I love the protected bike lanes the city is developing (come on, Knoxville!). We also spotted a Ferrari dealership in the upper east side and a Lamborghini parked on the street in SoHo.
But not everything on the street is gritty or car related. We saw lots of beautiful children all week walking through parks and down the street. One of our favorite afternoons we happened to sit beside the window of a coffee shop when school got out and we watched the parade of parents and nannies taking children home. We also saw a lot of cute pups, but I didn’t manage to get a picture of those. I’m still not sure what a “Mitzvah Tank” is, but we saw one. We saw a massive frieze being readied to climb to great heights and never been seen again as closely as we saw it. We stumbled upon the New York City/Dublin portal which connects the cities via live feed, so you can wave to people across the world. It’s been a spring/summer hit.
To end this part at the heart of our New York matter: We love the street, but there is no spot more perfect to us than Washington Square. The first night we arrived a Samba band had set up and hundreds of people of all shapes and races danced together. It was beautiful. We also planned a lazy Sunday of New York Times, coffee, and reading in the park. It was another perfect day.
I’ll cover some of the planned events and the serendipitous ones (the best) in subsequent posts. Next up, however, we’ll divert into Knoxville news. I’ll weave them back and forth over the coming days and introduce you to some new writers along the way.
