On Friday, we took the kids into the city for another adventure. This time we went to High Line Park and Chelsea Market.
The High Line is a park that was created on an old elevated subway line that has been out of service for decades. Guiliani wanted to demo it.
Aren't those lines of cement and greenery so totally beautiful?
The kids loved it, because they could run and clown around three stories up from the cars. They only had to dodge some grumpy old folks who don't like children who run.
Pretty glass, right? The locals fought against for a while, too, until they realized that this park upped everyone's property value by ten percent. Here are more pictures at National Geographic.
After we walked for a while, we decided that we needed food, so we walked over to Chelsea Market, which is a giant food court for foodies.
Here are the guys making bread for Amy's Bread. We bought a warm loaf of sour dough bread later.
I took a ridiculous number of pictures of the interior of this joint, because I'm a huge sucker for industrial loft spaces. Exposed brick and rusty beams! I need a cold shower.
We ate fancy cookies and fancy sushi. And then, because we had not eaten enough, we took the subway down to Chinatown for steamed vegetable dumplings.
UPDATE: Corrections by my Urban Planner Buddy. "It was a regular train line, not a subway. It used to bring food from upstate to the market that used to be right by the meatpacking district and before that it was in what is today tribeca. The train used to be at grade level but lots of people got killed so they elevated it. It delivered its last run in the 1980s I think – frozen turkeys. Now everything comes by truck. (did a few lectures on it and the meatpacking district, gansevoort st etc…)"
Apt. 11d 
Hey we were crossing paths in the city that day. We ate chinese in Midtown, though. The kids & spouse went up the Empire State Building (first time for the kids, 2nd time for spouse, but his last was in the 1970’s).
They paid extra for the “express pass” tickets, which apparently meant that they got to bypass numerous lines, and got called “sir” by the attendants. The little boy (and spouse, too, I guess) thought that was “awesome.”
New York was really really crowded from this left-coaster’s point of view. Of course, we were doing all the touristy and most crowded things, but still a change from the wide open spaces. People were surly and disorganized in a lot of places (the boat to the Statue of Liberty was terribly organized, and misleading — remember to arrive for the security line a couple of hours before your “ticket” time, like at the airport).But, they were surprisingly polite at MoMA (well the people who worked there; I saw a visitor being terribly rude to the workers). The free audio tours at MoMA were great. As was the art. I watched people watching “Starry night” and was amused when a group came up and asked “is that the real one?”
There’s nothing here that’s in the same ball park at all, and I wish people wouldn’t try. They should invest in contemporary art instead.
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Chelsea Market is pretty neat. I went there for the first time last November. Somehow I didn’t know about it when I lived in NY city. My favorite was the place that sold all sorts of fancy vinegars, olive oils, and salts, and has samples. The Ronnybrook store is good, too.
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“As was the art. I watched people watching “Starry night” and was amused when a group came up and asked “is that the real one?””
I once saw a visitor to the National Gallery in DC photographing a reproduction of an Impressionist masterpiece. There wasn’t a strong enough dividing line between the exhibits and the gift shop and he made an understandable mistake.
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You should turn your blog posts about “Adventures with Jo and E” into a published guide to NY and environs for visiting families.
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My kids loved the High Line until they tried to do something other than walk calmly down the center of the path holding a latte (i.e. the adult approach to the High Line). You cannot walk on the exposed railroad tracks… or the railroad ties … or jump off of random benches … or play at the water fountain. Or so we were told by several 20-something park wardens. It struck me as a very Disney-style managed public sphere experience. More of an outdoor museum than the park it bills itself as.
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