Chelsea

So I've had the last 4 Saturdays off from Williams-Sonoma for various family visits and other activities. One of those Saturdays in the middle I just wasn't scheduled so I decided to turn it into an explore New York day. I'm gonna have to have those more often. My friend Sabrina recently moved to NYC so she wanted to join in on the exploring. We decided to pick an area and spend the afternoon there. This week's destination: Chelsea.

We checked out a street market, wandered through the Historical District, and walked almost the entire length of the Highline. The sun was shining and it was a beautiful day. It was finally t-shirt and sandal weather (the weather has since reverted back to cold windy-ness but it was nice for a day). We spent all afternoon just exploring and enjoying the beautiful weather! Here are a few pictures from our exploring adventure:

When we were walking to the subway we got sucked into this pack of people doing a march against violence. Good thing it was for a good cause!

 

Our adventure of the day was giving ourselves a tour of an old church and the grounds. We'd read online it was one of the things you should see in Chelsea, so as we were walking by we decided to try and take a look. We rang the buzzer on the gate like the sign said, and another woman walked up just after us and did the same. Security came out and let us in, so we wandered around the gardens and the buildings and looked at the intricate carving and detailing. The interior of the church was beautiful. After awhile as we went to leave a group of ladies were trying to get into the grounds- and we overheard security tell them it was not open to the public on weekends. Oops. I guess they must have though we were with the other woman, but nobody ever asked- they just let us in without any questions! I guess we looked religious enough. I'm glad we got to accidentally sneak in, it was a fun adventure for our exploration day!

Beautiful spring blossoms.

 

 

The pictures above are of the Highline, which I think is a really cool "new" addition to NYC. It was an old elevated railroad track running through Chelsea. Not too long ago it was going to be torn down (because what purpose is there to old railroad tracks other than places for shady meetings right?), to create space to build more buildings (if I wasn't an architect I'd say something like "because Manhattan really needs more buildings" but I need to have a job ;). Any.way. A group of people got together and decided to turn it into a park. I think they did a fantastic job. It is now an elevated park that runs from near the West Village up to about 34th street. At the bottom of it you can look out and see the Statue of Liberty in the distance, and at the top you're almost level with the Empire State Building. Not only is a park a great idea in the middle of all the buildings, but they kept portions of the old railroad tracks and integrated them into the landscaping. And they continued to make it awesome by using that design concept to then create seating areas, pavilions, "city viewing" spots, etc. I call it a success!

Statue of Liberty off in the distance.

 

We took a break from the Highline to hop over to the Chelsea Market, which is a food market in the old Nabisco factory. Which also happens to be where the Oreo was invented. Yes New York is awesome. Just in case you were doubting that.





Mmm. Look at all those spices!

It was a really fun day. We finished it off with a birthday party for some friends and then exhaustedly made our way home completely worn out from our exploring. Hopefully I'll have another free Saturday afternoon soon so we can tackle another part of NYC!