The weather has changed! Yesterday was already turning sunny and quite a bit warmer. Monday is positively spring-like. We will spend the day outside.

We decide to do the High Line today, a highlight for Timo, who is studying city planning. And I decide to do some of it on my own because I want to see some of the neighborhood called “Hell’s Kitchen”. I have heard there is a lot of construction, and a struggle with what’s left of the old neighborhood fighting to survive amidst the aggressive gentrification going on on a mass scale here.

We begin by taking the 7 line train to Hudson Yards at 34th Street, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_Yards_(development) ascending a dizzyingly long escalator until we emerge, onto a gigantic construction site! It is awesome, all the construction going on. A friend told me, with disgust in her voice, “Millionaires are building luxury high rise apartment buildigs and tearing down the neighborhoods people have lived in for generations. If you go there now you can see the contrast.” I am curious.

When I arrive, I see it, but am overwhelmed, intimidated, even a little frightened. The entire neighborhood is being rebuilt. All for millionaires? Do so many people have this kind of money? Who are these people? I have heard many of them are rich Asians. Who has that kind of money? Where do the many more low-income people go? Something in me recoils, but is also fascinated by building on this scale. I hear famous architects are making their name here. https://www.hudsonyardsnewyork.com/

The strangest structure is this one. Another passer-by and I gaze at this, puzzled. Is it under construction? It doesn’t seem to have any function. People are walking in it, but where to? Is this some sort of giant piece of gym equipment? I later find out it is supposed to be the masterpiece of this project, the centerpiece. It is suppoed to stand out, like a twelve-month Christmas tree. It has been coined, at least for the time being, “Vessel”. It was designed by British Thomas Heatherwick and the Heatherwick Studio, and is intended to become a tourist site of its own. It is indeed a walkway, but will serve as a connection point between all the other surrounding buildings when they are finished. And yes, even this is not a gift to the poor. Just to enter this thing to get some exercise, you have to pay an entry fee.

I do see a few old buildings interspersed between all these gleaming structures, but how long will they coexist with all this money and power? But even they are being purchased and renovated.

I walk past an old warehouse that looks awfully clean to be just a warehouse. Curious, I enter. I have seen buildings like this in other cities, even New York – old buildings that were once warehouses, but are now art galleries, shopping malls, or restaurants. Sure enough, this one is another example of this. I find it still needs some concept to make the space inside more attractive, more integral to the architecture. But perhaps it will find more investors and turn into some thriving place people throng to for meals and shopping.

I find my friends, lounging on platforms on the High Line. Somewhere along the High Line someone planted a tree in honor of my deceased sister, but I have no idea where that could be. Here I see no signs or placques about donations. But the day has turned out bright and sunny. It’s a beautiful, interesting walk. We can at least look onto the patios of some of these millionaires, if not look directly into their windows. There are also interesting wall murals along the way. https://madhattersnyc.com/2018/11/07/kobra-street-art-new-york-city/

I also see some of what my friend was talking about when she mentioned the few remaining old buildings in Hell’s Kitchen. Hell’s Kitchen is the neighborhood the musical West Side Story takes place in. At that time, it was the dumping ground for Puerto Rican immigrants. How times have changed!

It is mid-afternoon and we have walked miles already, but we trudge on. My friend told me we could continue our walk into Greenwich Village, walking all the way along West Fourth Street to Washington Square. This is the route we take.

We find the famous Magnolia Bakery on W. 11th Street and Bleecker. https://www.magnoliabakery.com/ We can’t eat our cake in the bakery, but the day is warm and sunny, and there are picnic tables at the playground across the street. I choose a piece of key lime cheesecake and some tea. They choose coffee and more German-looking streusel cakes, and we share with one another. I love New York cakes – at least the ones in bakeries like this! Here they use plenty of first-class ingredients. It’s important to me that my German friends enjoy American cakes. Germans generally think American cakes are too sweet and too few in variety. I am delighted, and they are surprised to bite into these fabulous American cakes.

On, on we walk, through Greenwich Village, onto Washington Square, where hundreds of New York University students are soaking up the sun, some sitting on park benches, studying, as street musicians entertain them.

On, on we force ourselves to walk. It is late afternoon by now, but the sky is such a lovely blue. Who cares about blisters? Johanna has blister bandaids in her bag. They are here for the first time in their lives, only for a week, and they have to make the most of it. I endure with them. Their plan now is to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. “But let’s not walk to the bridge,” I entreat them. “I’ll never make it! Let’s take the subway.” So we get on a subway train at Washington Square and get off at Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall. There is a new path above ground, making the walk a lot shorter and more interesting than it used to be. The walk is beautiful, and in the late afternoon sunlight, warm.

“Even though we’re exhausted, we’ve got to get the view of Manhattan from Brooklyn Heights,” I say. I used to work in Brooklyn Heights, and it’s one of my favorite parts of New York. It would be – it’s also one of the most expensive, with old brownstone buildings from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Henry Ward Beecher, the father of Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote Little Women, was famous in his own day as a preacher. He pastored a church in Brooklyn Heights. The poet Walt Whitman also lived here and wrote his famous New York poems from here. Somewhere in Brooklyn Heights modern celebreties like Matt Damon, Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz live. We must see Brooklyn Heights!

I take them to the promenade overlooking the New York Harbor. We stand at sunset and look at the Statue of Liberty and the New York skyline, silenced, in awe. New York is such a beautiful city.

We eat delicious hamburgers at the New Apollo Diner http://newapollodiner.com/ in Brooklyn, our legs and backs exhausted, our feet blistered, but we are content. Brooklyn restaurants are not nearly as expensive as those in midtown Manhattan, and we have just feasted on one of the most iconic, visually satisfying treats available – anywhere.