Foxton Locks along canal and back

somewhere around 5 miles. From Bridge 61 to 71 and back.

Cycle ride round the Water

14.3 miles - brilliant weather again.


Map and details

Rutland Water - Normanton to Sykes Lane and back

Just under 5 miles

Wander round East Village

I met Morton, who took me on an impromptu guided tour of the East Village, after lunch at the Café Rakka in St Marks Place.

St Marks Place

Inside Two Boots Pizza - which began on Avenue A 25 years ago.  It was named because its founders had roots in Italy and Louisiana, both boot-shaped, and the restaurant serves unusual pizza toppings.  It has also always been notable for its child-friendliness, which was rare in the eighties. The area was pretty run-down when they started, but is now a safer, vibrant part of the city. Two Boots has branches in lots of other places and other cities now.

The counter is a collage of posters, photos and other ephemera.

 

The New York City Marble Cemetery  was founded in 1831, after an epidemic of yellow fever caused concern about normal burials in the earth.  One block west is the New York Marble Cemetery founded in 1830, which is entered via an alleyway with iron gates at each end. The funeral home nearby is a four-storey or so high building, on the roof of which is a strange stone or iron (?) owl with apparently cloth or similar wings.

List of interesting places - Tomkins Square Park,  Avenue B and A, Two Boots Pizza, Marble Cemetery, funeral home building with spooky owl on top, Colonnades on Lafayette(?) , Cooper Union building,  TD Bank with old photo of 2nd Avenue 'el' and corner of St Marks, La Mama theatre and others . . . Stuyvesant St,  Hamilton Fish House, First Houses public housing . . .

To Court Street for lunch and back.

Along Fifth Avenue as far as Carroll Street, and down to Court Street.

Carroll Street crossing of the Gowanus Canal

And back along Bergen Street.

Houses along Bergen Street

Fabulous warm weather - walk just over five miles.

Sunset Park

Very short wander to this viewpoint

Straight down to the water

From a little higher

Manhattan in the misty distance

A local denizen

Through Prospect Park to Museum of Art, and back later

Battery Park and north, then back via Brooklyn Bridge

Iris reticulata by the hundred in park by the Hudson

Looking across to New Jersey

Nice plants, shame about the sign

Massed crocuses sun-worshipping

Some fantasy sculptures in the park

Looking back across the bridge

My route

Short wanders round Red Hook and Battery Park.

Saturday I met Peter and Kath and we went for a short walk round Red Hook, and its waterfront.

Statue of Liberty in the distance

Old warehouses by the water

View of the Verrazano Narrows and Bridge

Sunday I took the subway with Brian and Leonie and a friend, plus the kids to Battery Park Playground, in southern Manhattan,  by the Hudson.  Within view is the w-i-p of Freedom Tower, which is to replace the WTC twin towers.   So much waterfront in this city one way and another, and they are making great use of it. Lunch in a rather typical burger place.

Kath's ceramics show is on at the Brooklyn Greenway Initiative Gallery until July 7 2012

Prospect Park and Kensington

Canada goose step

About 5 miles in all.  Fine, with a sharp cold wind, and later sunnier and warmer.

American robin

these leaves look as though they've dried in position

A few blocks away from the park - quite unlike most of Brooklyn

tree character 1

tree character 2

Through Brooklyn to the Bridge and back

The part I traced is  6.6 miles. I estimate the return leg, which I didn't trace was another 3 - so getting close to 10 miles today.  Lunch with Leonie, near the Carousel on the waterside.  Noticeably warm today, though breezy on the bridge.

Pics and map to follow.