Hiking the Old Croton Aqueduct

For those of you who crave a day-long, out-of-town, all-active adventure, this one is for you... I know this is exactly the kind of day I crave after eating copious amounts of mac 'n' cheese, turkey sandwiches and stuffing, all in the name of Thanksgiving of course, and especially when the sky could not be a more pristine shade of blue.

Stocked up on bagels and coffee from A.R.E.A. bagels on 5th Avenue in Brooklyn, we took the subway to 225th street where we could catch the Metro North up the Hudson. We'd recently learnt a fantastic tip (thanks Melissa!) - take the subway to 225th street in Marble Hill to change to the Metro North, and pay half the price of a ticket from Grand Central! Half price! For a slightly longer train ride and a chance to wait for your train right on the Harlem River, looking down towards Inwood (beautiful park at the tip of Manhattan which retains the original landscape of the island and has Lenape Indian caves). The journey to Ossining is non-stop breathtaking, gazing out onto the Palisades of New Jersey and the Hudson River.

You may have heard of the Sing Sing Prison, now Sing Sing Correctional Facility, which gained notoriety through New York gang members and is responsible for the expression 'sent up the river'. The town, fed up with its infamous association, changed its name in 1881 from Sing Sing to Ossining. The original cells were torn down and abandoned in 1984, but the correctional facility still remains to this day.

Of course the first port of call was a coffee for Jon (all adventures with Jon are preceeded by a coffee), after which we picked up the Old Croton Aqueduct path where I had left off a week ago on two wheels. As the aqueduct which provided water for New York City, the path is elevated for the most part, giving you great views in all directions. Once out of the town, the path switched from a metalled track to a woodland way, with ventilation towers marking approximately every one mile interval. After the path winds through Crotonville and a General Electric facility, it is virtually uninterrupted by roads as it makes its way through the Croton Gorge Park to the dam.

Even at first glance, the dam blows you away. Built by Italian Masons using as many stones as the Great Pyramid of Egypt, the dam spans the gorge and lets water steadily through its spillway from the Croton reservoir on the northern side. The vistas were amazing, and on a day so clear it was hard to make out where sky and lake met. Rainbows filled the spray from the falling water.

It was tough to tear ourselves away, but as the sun fell lower in the sky and Jon's stomach rumbled more and more, we knew it was time to make our way back along the aqueduct to Ossining. Next time (If I'm lucky!) we'll head back a different route via the Teatown reservation - watch this space!

Back in Ossining,we were confronted with the choice of bakery, deli or Isabella's Brick Oven Pizza, and my gosh did we make the right choice. A great pizza, perfect crispy crust, wide topping selection and a tomato sauce which was not too sweet (like so many NY pizza places). And great service to boot. Perhaps it was the 10 miles of walking which made it taste so good, but we would definitely recommend it for anyone heading this way!

Vertical Cities at my favourite museum in New York

Taking over the MTA transport museum as my new favourite museum in New York City is the Skyscraper Museum, which encompasses not just fascinating exhibitions and photos, but also incredible architecture. The building itself is designed to make you feel like you are standing on top of an infinitely tall steel and glass structure, and although it only covers one floor of a tiny building in downtown Manhattan, you can imagine being in one of the incredible buildings that the museums tell you about.
The current exhibition was a presentation on New York and Hong Kong as 'Vertical Cities', showing the differences in vertical development and the resulting infrastructures to sustain this 'vertical living'. What was most eye-opening was the picture of New York drawn in 1912 known as 'Future New York, The City of Skyscrapers', which resembles modern day Hong Kong rather than modern day New York, check out the picture to see what I mean. Hong Kong today boasts one of the (if not the?) most vertical skyline in the world, as well as (get this!) a 0.5 mile long escalator, the longest covered escalator system in the world, which gives you a 20 minute ride up through the city for commuters and naturally tourists too; three miles of raised covered pedestrian-only walkways linking key buildings together (oh if only Oxford Street, London and Canal Street, New York had this in place!) and the most slender skyscraper in the world with a width-height ratio of 1:20! Think of the tests needed to be performed on that building before construction even began!
The museum also contained a wooden model of Manhattan, made by Michael Chesko, a man with a lot of wooden pieces, time on his hands and highly skilled craftsmanship. Also a lot of imagination, given that it was not until the model was finished that he actually VISITED New York for the first time from his hometown of Arizona. He used aerial images and stuff to get an idea of the city skyline, from what I remember.

An Apocalyptic Moment?

It's strange you know, when I read other blogs it never seems like the first entry to a new blog is an apocalyptic moment, but surely sometimes that's the point of it all? Choose a blog, choose a theme, introduce a theme, bumble on about said theme for years to come in the hope that people are still reading it, even if it is because they've gone through all their other favourites in their browser and already read all the works of Dostoyevsky for free on-line...

Anyways, I'm hoping to create and entice you with this blog with the theme of...dum da dum.... missions. That's not religious missions I hasten to add, but missions of an adventurous sort. So what qualifies as a mission? An adventure into the unknown? An exploration of something you've always wanted to see, you've been recommended, or have read about in some '100 things to do before you die' list? I would say that it's all of the above, but a lot simpler than that (hurray and phew, says everyone who thought this was going to be strenuous!). A mission is leaving your comfort zone and doing something different - yes, it does usually have to involve leaving the house (I hope I didn't just lose half of my readership) (that is, the cheerers and sighers of relief from the previous sentence), but it could be to see something at the end of your road, or something on the other side of the world!

Alternatively, if you'd rather just stay at home and mooch about on the web searching for a new and exciting fact which is going to be the clincher in your next pub quiz, have a look at my old (and not very extensive) blog: http://london-bradipi.blogspot.com/2006/09/bradipi-means-sloths-in-italian.html