Day 2 – New York City

New York City — By Ryan on January 16, 2010 10:46 pm

So today was the first day where I was left to my own devices to explore this amazing city, and explore I did.  I set out on foot from the East end of Grand street and walked over the FDR parkway onto this awesome bike path that goes all along the south side of the island.  This led me under the Broolyn bridge, along the water and eventually to this this really cool Pier/shopping complex with these old sail boats moored outfront.

It was amazing to walk under these behemoth monstrosities that span the water.  With bridges of this scale being built before the advent of computers and proper testing procedures they simply overbuilt everything by massive amounts.  I had no idea of the scale of these bridges from Television and the movies and was blown away when I was walking under neath of them.

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Of course being New York my admiration was short lived as shortly thereafter I was savagely attacked by crazy New York Pidgins:

Well maybe not attacked but I saw a big group and going through it seems way more fun than going around

I wandered around pier checked out the ships and then headed into the financial district.   The first thing I noticed as I walked down Wall Street is how quiet things were.  First off there was a strict no honking policy in effect so the normal sounds of traffic were almost non-existent.   Secondly the whole are was fairly empty of people as I figured this would be a majorly busy part of town.  I seemed to have been wrong.  It was neat to wandering around without much of anything there, enjoying this old old tall buildings all built so close to each other and know that this was the epicenter of the financial world.  I went up wall until I hit Trinity church and took a gander around the WTC site and moved onto Battery park.  Battery Park interested me because I was going ot use it in a short film down the road that had a largish ship landing there, after closer inspection of it it became apparent that there certainly isn’t enough flat land space to land the craft in question.  But it still made for a cool walk as I was able to take a peak at the Statue of Liberty and see the massive Colgate clock across the river, such an odd site that I had to take a shot.  It was surprisingly peaceful there, at point I could only hear the sounds of birds even though I was one block away from the old WTC site.

But enough peace and quiet, I can certainly get that back home and so back into the city I trekked as I wasn’t in the heart of human civilization for peace and quiet so onward.  All of the buildings were breathtaking down here, as you’ll see in the gallery at the bottom of the page but the only real building I went in here was the Supreme court as it looked the most welcoming and the most impressive, but all of the buildings in here were amazing. 200+ years old all of them, made of huge stone blocks and impressive architecture it was like being in Old Montreal but 10 times more impressive, 10 times larger and 10 times to scale.  I could spend days down here(assuming it wasn’t so cold) just admiring these buildings.

Hungry and cold I decided to begin my journey to 1 of 2 of my only real destinations that day: Vegan Pizza shops.  I am bound and determined to have my very own New York slice on my first day alone in this great city, but being a vegan made this trek a little more challenging than the ordinary person.  Fortunately there were two places relatively close to each other that catered to my lifestyle so I set out to try them both.

The first place is called ‘Two boots to Go-go‘ and was on Broadway and Bleaker, although more on Bleaker than Broadway.

My directions said it was on Broadway so I missed it the first time until I looked down Bleaker and found it hiding a store or two in.  Excited and hungry I entered the shop and asked for their Vegan Pizza(it seemed they only had one) and waited for them to heat it up in the oven.  After a few minutes I was served this massive slice of pizza and settled in to chow down.  It wasn’t too expensive, under $4 I believe and as I mentioned it was huge.  It was a great whole wheat crust(I believe) and loaded up with toppings, all veggies of course.  You can see it in the pictures below.  It certainly was a good pizza, better than most I’ve had with the exception of a pizza I had in Venice but it wasn’t vegan so it isn’t fair to compare.

After Two Boots to Go-Go the next stop was Cafe Viva Natural Herbal which was at 179 2nd Street.  It only took 10 minutes or so to hoof it over there and as soon as I walked in I knew that it was well worth it.

While the first place only had 1 vegan pizza this place catered to vegans in a serious way.  35% of their pies were Vegan and the rest were very healthy.  Spelt crusts were the norm, and these slices were even larger.  It was the magic mushroom piece I ordered and the toppings again were massive.  This time they were so huge that I was forced to eat it with a fork and knife as the pizza couldn’t support it’s own weight.

The crust, spelt I believe, was the best pizza crust I have ever had.  In fact the pizza itself is definitely in the top 2.  But it didn’t stop there.. The store had vegan cheesecake, vegan cookies and everything else you could imagine.  Without a doubt the top prize for pizza joints goes to Cafe Viva Natural, man oh man it was good.  I can’t wait to go back and get everything else they have.

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From here I walked down 2nd to Grand and ended up in Chinatown where I headed west in search of little italy.  As my friend Roland had warned me little Italy had pretty much been taken over by China town, and it seems he was correct.  There was 1 or 2 italian shops(I was looking for pasta for dinner) but no grocery stores.   So I wandered through China town for a bit and then headed home where I would pass out at 9pm from a lack of sleep, but certainly not lack of excitement 

Here are the rest of the pictures of the entire walk.

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Tags: battery park, bridges, day 2, New York City, pizza, surpreme court, vegan, walls st, wtc