On the other hand, because we were getting up so early, I didn't have time to post anything yesterday, so here are some pictures and stuff.
There used to be an elevated transit line that ran through the meat packing district, down near the Chelsea Piers.
It had been abandoned for a long time, and in the way of the world, plants had started to grow up there. 
Some preservationists came up with the idea that it could become an elevated green belt, and they've made it happen. It goes for about 6 or 8 blocks, and is planted with what I suppose are native plants and grasses.I would also say that there seem to be a lot of things blooming that should have been blooming in the spring, had it not been so cold here. And then, there are views: Like the Empire State building.
When you look down from here onto some of the streets, you can almost imagine old New York.
The Chelsea area has the typical hangers-on that sprout up around an arts area, cute restaurants, and the like, and foofy-ed up ground floor retail in the older buildings. As you walk along this park, there are benches, some shady spots, but of course there may never be big enough trees for shade, so shady spots are something you find where other structures cross over the top. One of the nice shady spots is here where a building is over the top and creates great shade. And since this is a park, someone is selling food. And the food is GELATO. This is a little chain of gelato carts we've stopped at in various places around town.
They have only a few flavors, maybe 10 -- but it is really, really good gelato. I'd say it melts in your mouth, but even bad gelato does that, but this gelato makes your mouth want to melt into the gelato and become one with the gelato. I am becoming one with the gelato, due to frequent exposure, but it's more melting into my belly fat. 
And just one more picture. Maybe you can't tell from this, but the roof below (near the "lamb" sign) is covered with flowers. You will probably have to click on this picture to actually see the lamb sign or the flowers. But the flower roof is right near the taxi. 
The next picture is taken in the sort of underpass area where we got the gelato, and is just some sort of pretty glass that's part of a factory window. It was much more green up at the top of the window than it appears in this picture. We dropped by the WTC site today, but someone gave us bad directions, so we missed the museum. I only sort of wanted to go, so that was okay with me. I needed to buy a bathing suit for the now-cancelled trip to East Hampton today, and we stumbled onto this store called Century 21, which bills itself as Manhattan's best kept secret. I dunno about that. There were mobs of people in the store. They were grabbing stuff as if cloth would never be made again. To go into the fitting room they had a hard and fast rule of 6 items. If you were trying on a 2-piece anything, that counted as 2 pieces. If you had more items, and women were in line with laundry basket-sized collections of clothes, you put them in the hallway, took the six items you wanted to try on, when you finished with those six, you had to leave, come out, pick up the next six, and get in line again. They ran it like a military camp. But in fact, it was efficient. Even though there were about 15 people in line ahead of me, I don't think I waited more than 5 minutes to get in. I suspect there were at least 40 fitting rooms, all slightly bigger than a phone booth. I managed to get a bathing suit for a mere $21, though.
Last night we all went to John's and my favorite restaurant on the upper west side, Cafe Con Leche. We had various dishes, including chicken in mango sauce, shrimp in mango sauce, chicken in coconut, and two different pork dishes, that were sort of carnitas-like. Sides were rice and black beans and plantains. We got both the sweet and the green plantains. The sweet are much better, though the green ones are nice with the two sauces on the table.
No comments:
Post a Comment