Bike Adventure

These photos are all backwards...so today Mr. and I decided to take a bike ride. We went down to the Bike and Roll place on the West Side Highway and 43rd and rented some. Then we biked the Greenway all the way to Battery Park. It sounds like a long way, but it was absolutely not and we had a two hour rental and took lots of time to stop and look at the view and google interesting things along the way. In addition, this bike path is the only place I would ride a bike in Manhattan- I am a total wuss on the street. We veered off to look at some buildings on Charles Street and it was too nerve wracking...We also rode through the parks in Battery Park City- so lovely, so..suburban. There is a memorial for the Irish Potato Famine that also raises awareness of world hunger. I had always wanted to check it out and it was conveniently located on our path (see the bottom photo). Besides that Battery Park is an interesting destination that we rarely visit. We walked back north, through a funny Romanian Street Fair, which had exactly nothing to do with Romania.


I really was luring Mr. along because we have a banh-mi obsession. When I was at the yarn shop, we would always order Nicky's, which were sandwiches like I have never had before. Mystery meat, carrots, cucumber, cilantro, and jalapeno on a French baguette. Come to find out, from the NYTimes, that these are Vietnamese banh-mi and are the latest sandwich craze. So we taste tested two new shops: Paris Bakery and Banh-mi Saigon. First, we ate Paris- which were ok. They are known for the bread baked fresh every hour- but the meat was a bore and kind of flavorless. Then we went to Banh-mi Saigon which is a stand in the back of a jewelry store. Very tasty meat, kind of sweet and less than $4. I recently brought home sandwiches from Num phang- which we really tasty (but twice as expensive). The cocunut shrimp would be worth it again...But can I say, I think Nicky's is the best and I knew it before the NYTimes!

My greatest joy in living in Manhattan is finding little signs on buildings that tell you about some famous person or thing that happened there. So the disk with William Bartham's name on it, is embedded in the sidewalk on Broadway and Maiden Lane and used to have a clock in it. The timepiece is gone, but the compass remains to remind New Yorkers that, despite what we all say, Manhattan is not due north-south. We walked all the way to City Hall and behind the Supreme Court building to the site of Five Points, the infamous slum. It now is a huge park teeming with the latest immigrant community, the Chinese. There was some really intense games of Mah-jong and a band...and a crazy Chinese lady in a sombrero- ah NY.