New York Day 3

Well it was back on the bus today so that we could get dropped off at City Hall and walk the Brooklyn Bridge; of course City Hall is where Mayor Bloomberg has his office. The walk across the bridge to DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) was easy and not too scary plus it gave us some pretty good views of both Brooklyn and Manhattan, the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and Governor's Island.

DUMBO was primarily a manufacturing district, housing warehouses and factories that made machinery, paper boxes and Brillo soap pads. The cardboard box was invented in the Robert Gair building on Washington Street here. With deindustrialization it began becoming primarily residential, when artists and other young homesteaders seeking relatively large and inexpensive loft apartment spaces for studios and homes began moving there in the late 1970s. The acronym Dumbo arose in 1978, when new residents coined it in the belief such an unattractive name would help deter developers - yeah right!

From DUMBO it was onto the ferry back across the Hudson River to catch the bus back up town so that we could go back and have a look at The Cathedral of St John The Devine. This is a massive gothic church (the Statue of Liberty can comfortably fit under it's dome)that began life in 1892 and in 2001, after a fire, it underwent restoration and reopened to the public in 2008 but is still unfinished; it had a lovely feature in it's grounds.

From here it was a walk back down the 103rd Street Subway to catch a train back to Times Square. The Subway is hot. The trains are hot. Jude and I were very pleased to finally get above ground even though it was very humid it was way cooler!

We found a nice Irish Pub for dinner; went a did a little shopping at the Disney Store and then headed home to rest our feet.