Southern Invasion

I went on a much-needed vacation to New York City this month and did tons and tons of walking, shopping and exploring. While the city was so much fun and there were endless things to do, I recommend you go … but wait until the fall. Seriously, the fantastic invention of air conditioning has not yet embedded itself fully in New York life. It was hot, people. Yes, hotter than Arkansas. Here are some snippets of my adventure. I highly recommend you try them all! 

Not Grimaldi's pizza, but still delicious.

My tour guide/boyfriend lived in New York for 8 years, so he had a lot of things on our to do list. First was walk across the Brooklyn Bridge and eat at his favorite pizza place, Grimaldi’s. The walk across the bridge was beautiful and the coal-fired brick oven pizza was the best I tried, and definitely worth the half-hour wait for a table. 

 Next, we walked down to The Fulton Ferry Landing pier at the foot of Old Fulton Street. This pier is one of Brooklyn’s most historic sites, marking the location of the first ferry service between Brooklyn and Manhattan in 1642. You can find engravings of Walt Whitman’s “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” poem and eat delicious all-natural ice cream from the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory. 

 

You have to visit the American Museum of Natural History… especially if you have kids. You could spend all day learning about space, dinosaurs, the human body and more. 

Midway through our trip we escaped to the Catskill Mountains for a friend’s wedding at the Onteora Mountain House, which was built as a retirement home by the late Richard Hellmann, owner of Hellmann Mayonnaise and now serves as a beautiful bed and breakfast/wedding facility. This relaxing getaway was a little taste of home as the area was strikingly similar to the Ozarks. Nothing to do but put our feet up and relax before we went back to battle with the city. 

  
The High Line is in the process of being transformed into an elevated park and walking path. It was originally constructed in the 1930s to lift dangerous freight trains off Manhattan's streets. It sat in disrepair for years, but now features landscapes of meandering concrete pathways, plantings and gardens, fixed and movable seating, lighting and more.

And, of course, no trip to New York is complete without a sweaty walk through Central Park.