There's an effort to make the city a bicycle-friendly place, but right now it is not! The exception to this is the dedicated bike lanes (safe from vehicular traffic) from George Washington Bridge down the Battery Park City (pictured below), looping around to South Street Seaport and the Brooklyn bridge. Central park is another nice place to experience it on a bicycle--more on this in a future post.
All along the Hudson river on the West Side of Manhattan there are access points to the river and gorgeous views. In the picture above, far in the distance it's Liberty Island with the famous statue celebrating liberty and immigration--let's not forget that.
The Winter Garden below has been fully restored after it was destroyed during the World Trade Center attack on 9-11-01.
The area between the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges is undergoing lots of nice development with plans for improving the waterfront.
The famous Brooklyn Bridge. Lots of people take advantage of the walkway. The bridge opened in 1883, after 17 years of construction. Further to the north, the Manhattan bridge. You can see the "waterfalls" art project under the bridge.
Williamsburg in Brooklyn is the center of the Hasidim community. Williamsburg bridge, north of Manhattan bridge, made easier for lots of immigrants, especially Jewish to move to the borough of Brooklyn from the Lower East Side.
Pier 17, a nice place to visit but it's become a tourist destination and because of its smaller size, it gets very crowded. You can have a drink and hang out, but there are only a couple good places to eat, because all the rest are overpriced tourist traps of dubious quality.
The New Jersey skyline, Jersey City on the left and Hoboken on the right. It was a hazy dusk, around 8:30pm.
Friday, July 11, 2008
A Bicycle is a Great Means to see Parts of New York City
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5 comments:
Great suggestions. I've only done parts of the west side bicycle lanes, down to BatteryPark City, but all the way to the GWB, where I stopped because I thought I couldn't go no further, unless I was willing to go on regular streets up there, something I didn't want to do. Great picts.
It's dangerous (traffic and not-so-good areas around the NY foot of the GW bridge), and not very nice. But, if you manage to go further to the north by the Hudson, Inwood area, it's not that bad.
However, the nicest parts are south of the GW bridge all the way to South Street Seaport.
I've done the Path train to Christopher Street and 9th St. and it's a royal pain to get your bicycle out of the station. It can be a nightmare if there's a crowd.
Only one exit, very narrow, and then you have to navigate up some narrow and winding stairs to the street.
The Path allows bikes on the weekends but you can hardly find space on a train to take your bike... It's crowded, and not a good situation to be holding on to a bike....
But, if you go through this unpleasantry, the experience of riding in NYC is worth it.
The Barnegat lighthouse is tall, and going up those narrow stairs is not that easy. But, the views are spectacular. Since there's not much space up there, it can get crowded, which is not good.
Those who are afraid of heights, the observation deck has bars all over so there's no way you can fall over... unless there's an earthquake and the whole thing topples over! Or, a tsunami, or somekind of structural defect they don't know about... after all, the "deck" overhangs the main structure...
Oh, don't mind me, it's safe. You can't go wrong for a $1. Then you can claim you had your daily exercise and splurge on ice cream!
damn... sorry, I meant to leave this comment on the LBI post....
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