While Mrs. BD and I are planning all of our Spring and early summer weekend day hikes from the Hudson Highlands, to the Berkshires, to the White Mountains, the Bulldog and I are working on a plan for the Third Annual Maggie's Farm Urban Hike.
Hiking amongst rocks and trees is fine, but there is far more stuff to look at in the city.
It will be Manhattan again because we have not tramped every inch of the wonder-filled olde island yet. We have fun with New Yorkers on these hikes, but the out-of-towners get the best intro to the real city on foot on ten-mile hikes through all sorts of neighborhoods. People from all over have joined us in the past - very nice Maggie's friends. Good fun for all, if a bit hectic.
Our last hike went from the Lower East Side to Grant's Tomb, and included most of the length of Central Park. It was about a 12-mile hike.
When we're done, maybe Brooklyn next. Who knows? To me, Brooklyn beyond Cobble Hill, Brooklyn Heights, the BAM, and Junior's, is a mysterious foreign country. Oh, also Peter Luger's - everybody's favorite old-time steakhouse. Cobble Hill used to be so mobbed-up that nobody ever locked their car there. Now, I don't know. Probably all hipsters now. Did you know that if Brooklyn were still a separate city, it would be the 4th largest city in the USA?
For tentative plans (no date set), we're thinking Chinatown west to Tribeca, then uptown thru the West Village (which I love as does everybody), maybe the High Line, then uptown past Clement Moore's church (Chelsea was the name of his family farm and his family owned all of what is now known as Chelsea), maybe as far up as possible. I'd love to get to Hamilton's farmhouse in Hamilton Heights. Probably would take too long unless on horseback. (He used to commute from his law offices downtown to his farmhouse, up Broadway on horseback, on weekends.)
I wonder if we could get to the Cloisters. Likely not. It's not the crow's fly distance, it's the zigzags and the stoplights and the food and the bathroom stops.
Washington Heights has great Dominican food.
