A Scenic Walk Across the Brooklyn Bridge
As I mentioned in the Grimaldi’s post, I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge to continue my pursuit of the perfect New York Slice. You can get on the bridge at city hall (take the R,J,M,Z,4,5,6) and walk or bike across it, but be prepared cause it’ll take you maybe 15-20 minutes (estimated) to get across on foot.
The New York City Boardwalk
The first thought that occured to me as I started walking over the wooden slats that suspended us over the traffic zooming below was that the Brooklyn Bridge is a lot like a boardwalk on a beach. You get a great, unobstructed scenic view of both Manhattan and Brooklyn as you walk across, as well as a view up and down the East river and Governor’s Island. There are people selling bottled water on the bridge for a dollar a pop when it’s hot, but be aware that it can get pretty windy and cool up on the bridge, even in the summer.
Getting Off
The weird part of the excursion happens when you reach the Brooklyn side of the bridge. It’s walled in by traffic on either side, so they give you a choice: walk straight ahead and into what I like to think of as The Mystery Tunnel of Doom, or veer off to the right and nearly double the distance of the trip as you walk between concrete barriers separating you from high speed traffic. We chose to take the long, above-ground route and finally were spilled out on an unfamiliar cross street. Fortunately there was a map. Unfortunately, we were totally unfamiliar with the area, so we couldn’t effectively read it, so we wandered off until we found our final destination, Grimaldi’s!
The Bottom Line
The Brooklyn Bridge is a pretty cool site seeing adventure, but also a relatively short one if you don’t count the long additional penalty walk for not taking The Mystery Tunnel of Doom at the Brooklyn end. If you want to feel really touristy/boardwalky, grab a hotdog or pretzel at the City Hall end and munch as you look out over the river and take in the sites. It’s free, so it’s definitely worth a look if you’ve got a do-nothing Saturday afternoon planned. Just make sure the weather is going to hold up, or you might find yourself unpleasantly stranded in the middle of a thunderstorm.