New York Trip Post: Day 3: Downtown Manhatten

September 02, 2017

New York Trip Post: Day 3: Downtown Manhatten

Have you read my other NYC posts. If not, you can go to the home page and find them there or do a NYC search. As I was trying to break down what we did on each day I decided to do a google search on how NYC is divided because I wasn't sure if I was getting it all right. Did you know there are 5 "boroughs" of NYC? I love that word.

They are: Manhatten, The Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island.

Manhatten is divided into 3 regions; Uptown, Midtown and Downtown, and those are divided into Upper west side, Midtown west, Lower east side, etc. Then those areas are divided into neighborhoods, like; Chelsea, Greenwich Village, Tribeca, etc.. Find some great maps that outline these here. I kind of wish I found this site before we went as it had some great tips...thinking another trip will be needed.

On this third day of our trip we decided to knock out downtown. We covered a lot of ground but I kind of wish we would've gone slower through a few areas, however, the girl had a list and this trip, really, was about marking those things off. I had one main thing I wanted to do and that was go to Chelsea Market. I'm sure if I had researched more I would have found more places. For example I discovered after we got back, that B& H Photo supplies main headquarters was two blocks from our hotel. WHAT! I totally would've went there.

This morning we actually took a bus downtown, since we had purchased a weeklong pass it was good for bus and subway. Our first stop was Blue Bottle Coffee which is across the street from Chelsea market. From there we hit the market and enjoyed wandering through some of the shops. So much to see and do...I probably could've spent a few hours browsing even more slowly. From there we hit the subway to Soho.

There were several wall murals that my daughter wanted to see. She loves photography and so many of the sites we were seeing were more for photographic purposes and not necessarily your touristy sites. Many of these murals were in Little Italy and the Soho area. I wish we would have meandered through Little Italy but she actually wasn't feeling great on this morning and so we were just trying to see what was on the list and find something cold to drink. We found an awesome little Organic juice/smoothie/natural store called Madhufalla Green Planet Organics on Mulberry, and enjoyed some cold smoothies on the hot day. We found most of the sites and also a few shops she wanted to visit in Soho. We also visited The Little Cupcake Bake shop! YUM!!

From there we headed to the 9/11 memorial. We didn't go into the museum but just walked around. Can I tell you that it is a very emotional experience..at least for me. Wow! It was really just very surreal, to try and think about that day and what was experienced in that moment and in days, weeks, months to come. I wondered how many people just had to move away because it is just always there as a reminder...is it too raw for them? We noticed that next to some names there were white roses. We found out that each morning the staff puts a rose next to the names of those who have a birthday on that day. There is at least one birthday for each day of the year and 6 on 9/11. That started a fresh wave of emotion.

After visiting the memorial we headed to Pressed Juicery which was highly recommended to us. We struggled to find them but finally ended up at their Financial District shop, where we enjoyed some frozen yogurt and a fresh juice. We also got rained on but hey, we're from the PNW, we were used to it. We perused the financial district a bit before heading on our way.

I was just remembering that we had a plan to go to Hoboken this night (because we mainly wanted to get the city skyline at night), but when we got to the ferry terminal we discovered it didn't run during that time or something like that. The one that would run was too far of a walk. We were so tired, and hungry. We were trying to follow our gps to get directions back to a subway or bus to go back to our hotel but seemed to keep getting messed up. We ended up finding a healthy Mexican restaurant to eat at, hoping a little rest and food in our belly would help our moods. Somehow we ended up back at our hotel. I don't remember if we ate dinner anywhere or what we did...it is just all running together now.

Another great day in the books. A lot of walking...feeling more confident with busses and subways. We got this!