Expedition East Coast: Day 22 A tour of Brooklyn and then home

[CrispyA]

9 August

We slept okay and were quite excited as we headed to breakfast, remembering how good it had been at the previous Best Western we had stayed in at the start of our trip. This breakfast wasn't as good but to be fair, the bar had been set pretty high. We had this meal in another basement with no TV, which made it all very quiet.

After breakfast we finished packing and then checked out and put our bags in the hotel storage. Our flight wasn't until the evening so we were going to spend the day exploring Brooklyn.

We set off to walk to Prospect Park which wasn't too far away. It was really hot so we were glad to find some shady spots in the park. We checked out the dog beach, watching the dogs enjoying the water and then walked up to the picnic house - mainly to use the restrooms. I did have a minor drama in there as my door wouldn't open and for a few panicked moments I thought I was locked in and would have to slide out underneath the door (hurrah for the "no privacy" American toilet doors). Eventually the door did open and the family showed no concern whatsoever for my plight when I eventually reappeared. Thanks guys.

Prospect Park was a good green space in the city and we enjoyed walking through it. They had a Botanical Gardens next door as well which would have been nice.

At the other end of the park we spotted a cool Flatiron building.

We were all very hot by now and I went to get a cold bottle of water from a nearby stand. As we walked on to see the Brooklyn museum, I offered the bottle to Evan to cool the back of his neck. Embarassingly, I was actually offering to cool the neck of a complete stranger, who looked nothing like Evan. He did laugh about it though, while Evan shook his head and disowned me.

The fountains outside the Brooklyn Museum were pretty cool and it looked like a nice place. As we walked back to the intersection, there was a crash and a squirrel fell out of an overhanging tree, landing on the pavement. It looked a bit dazed for a moment but then got up and ran around a bit before disappearing back into the park. It was quite odd - but I had great sympathy with the squirrel, being a somewhat clumsy being myself.

The boys were keen to get online and check the football news as the transfer window was closing today. I wanted to keep as much battery on my phone as I could as we were using it for google maps, so we sat outside the Brooklyn Library so that the boys could use the free WiFi. It's a really nice building and seemed to be very well used.

Once it had been established that Jack Grealish was staying at Aston Villa (Phew!), we were able to move on. We were heading for DeKalb market and it was a fairly easy straight walk from the library. We passed some fountains and a statue of JFK on the way.

We also stopped for our final Dunkin Donuts iced coffee of the holiday.

It was a good walk to the market which is right in the downtown centre of Brooklyn. It was all pretty busy here but still not as hectic as Manhattan had been. DeKalb is a really cool food market with so many different stalls. The main reason for coming was that there is a stall for Katz's Deli which we hadn't managed to try earlier in the trip. We found the stall quite easily and ordered a corned beef sandwich, knish and hotdog to share. The sandwich was huge and crammed full of meat and also very tasty. The knish was a bit odd, basically a potato pasty, but it was nice.

After Katz's, we headed out to find Junior's, which was just around the corner. This is the original Junior's which had been recommended by a colleague who is from New York. We got a piece of their famous cheesecake to take out and went to find somewhere to eat it.

Evan doesn't like cheesecake so had a Twinkie instead. It had been at the bottom of a bag for several days but was still edible. Those things are worryingly indestructable!

The cheesecake was delicious but I'm glad we got a piece to share - it was huge! I was happy that we'd managed to have a proper Deli sandwich and a piece of cheesecake - at last.

Hannah and I called to Trader Joe's to get some more water and experienced their fairly odd queuing system, where someone is employed to direct you to different tills. It all seemed a bit over the top but at least it was all very organised.

While we were gone, Paul took a photo of Evan and all his friends.

We had all had enough of being in the city by now so decided to walk to Brooklyn Bridge Park. On the way we passed where we had walked to Brooklyn Bridge on our first night in New York, which seemed apt.

The park was a nice escape from the city, with good views of Brooklyn Bridge and Manhattan across the water.

We had a mooch around Piers 5 and 6 where lots of families had come to use the grills and hang out by the East River.

Once we'd had enough, we walked to the nearest station to get the subway back to our hotel and pick up our bags. There were some nice brownstone buildings in this part of Brooklyn.

Back at the hotel, we collected our bags before heading out to the airport. We got the train heading out to Rockaway Beach which was mostly above ground and a much nicer journey. We had wished we'd booked our last night out this way as it would have been nice to go to the beach, but actually, our last day in Brooklyn was our most enjoyable day in New York so at least we had a more positive memory to go out on.

We got the AirTrain to JFK and got checked in ready for our flight home. We had been looking forward to a Panda Express at the airport but alas, the one that had been there previously had burnt down so we were disappointed. Still, we just about managed to cope as there was a Shake Shack - phew! Mindful of the "Pole" incident a few days earlier, Paul was taking no chances and gave his name as "Joe" this time.

The flight back was fine - we enjoyed the limited selection of movies and most of us even managed a bit of sleep. We had been quite conservative with train times and landing and immigration etc took much less time than we thought so we did have quite a wait for our train from Manchester Airport. Still, once we were back, it wasn't long before we were home.

We had a great trip, with the highlights being Acadia National Park and lake swimming. We mostly enjoyed Washington and Boston but none of us would hurry back to New York. However despite enjoying parts of them, we all felt that there had been too much time spent in cities and that we would prefer more time in small towns and getting outdoors on future trips.

Next adventure is Madrid in February and then, despite saying we would have a year off going to the US, we have flights booked to Chicago for next summer. Paul's other uncle lives there and wants us to visit, so we are planning a Great Lakes adventure with plenty of swimming and hiking.

Thanks for reading and I hope you've enjoyed travelling along with us.