July 17 There's No Place Like Home

I might live in Chicago but I still consider New York City my home. Sometimes I get a feeling that I need to go home...right now. It's hard to explain, I guess it's like a heroin addict. I need a NYC fix and I need it now. That's why this trip came up out of nowhere. I needed a fix. I always feel a different type of energy in NYC. It recharges my batteries. The heartbeat of the city, the fast pace, the multitude of things to see and do make NYC like no other place on Earth.


We took the subway from Queens to the city, Manhattan. We started at Union Square on 14th Street. The park is always full of vendors selling their art, photographs, t-shirts and today there was a farmer's market.
We did some shopping while walking down Broadway & Lafayette Streets toward Soho. There is no sales tax on clothing items under $110 and every style is available here. Some things are definitely seen only in New York, like this window arrangement. I have no idea what it is supposed to represent or sell. But it looked cool to me with the church across the street.



We cut across Manhattan and walked to Greenwich Village. We ate at a little Italian café, Piccola Cucina on Prince street along the way. We also stopped to rest at a walled garden attached to a church on 6th Ave. Then we got fantastically lost in Greenwich Village. The Village has some great old streets that are part of the pre-grid street layout that the city decided to start just north of the area. The Village is always an interesting walk. Some of the city's oldest homes and free thinkers are here.

We ended our trip in the Meatpacking District, named for the large amount of butchers that used to be in the area not for the reason you might be thinking. Thanks to a group of citizens, Friends of the High Line, a long ago abandoned elevated freight line has been turned into a park. It is the last elevated train line left in Manhattan and now it is a park. I've read about it for years and recently the first section was opened. They did a great job creating a park using it's former life as the theme for the park.