New York Day 5: South Street Seaport & East Village

My last day in New York! Oh noes. It’s always a sad day when it’s the last day. Time literally flies. I can’t even believe I have been away for 2.5 weeks. By the time I am writing this, I am already home and unpacked, read to go to sleep in my own bed again. I would also like to point out that the next couple of days I will not be posting any blogs. I am gonna need some time to get over this jetlag and visit friends and family. But, don’t worry, I will be back either during or just after the weekend with my shoplog from this past trip! So stay tuned. Now, back to business.

Ship @ South Street Seaport

Day 5 in New York may be my last day, but it proved to be eventful. I started by packing up my things and checking out of my room around 11 AM. Then I set towards the South Street Seaport: the old historic harbor of New York. To my disappointment, all there was, were a few impressive boats and the entire area has been redeveloped into a tourist attraction with a few shops around. Needless to say I walked around for about 10 minutes and figured I should move on. I did catch a phenomenal view of Brooklyn Bridge in the mean time, but other than that: don’t waste your time by going here when you’re in NYC.

Brooklyn Bridge

Close up

Not really having a plan for what to do next, I just started walking up north. I ended up walking all the way along LaFayette Street to 14th Street/ Union Square where I grabbed a bite to eat at IHOP (memories!) and walked on towards 5th Avenue all the way to 23rd street. On my way, I crossed plenty of New York landmarks, such as City Hall, the court houses, Union Square and the Flatiron Building.

City Hall

Court Houses

FDNY station

Union Square

Flatiron Building

Naturally I also came across some cool shops. I had looked up good music places before going on this trip and there was this one in particular that I liked, but I had forgotten the name or where it was located. While I was walking I suddenly walked right towards it. The name of the place is Other Music and if you ever need a good address for indie music, this is the place to go to. They also have a selection of vinyl and used CDs and vinyl and is located right off Lafeyette on 4th Street.

Another store I want to tell you about is another bookstore. This time one specializing in used and rare books. It was only a hole whole in the wall, but packed to the ceiling with books, categorized in one way or other, but even the owners admitted to have lost track of everything. Piles of books were scattered around the floor and from what I could tell from my quick browse they had a good selection of English/ American Literature. The name of the shop is Alabaster Bookshop and is located on Fourth Avenue.

And that pretty much sums up day 5. I walked back to my hotel, picked up my bags, waited for my airport shuttle (which was a bit late) and arrived at the airport around 8 PM. The flight was horrendous. For some reason it seemed like everyone in my vicinity had a baby or a small child with them and as soon as one of them cried, they all cried. I did get to sleep most of the way though, but I was rudely awakened by the flight attendant opening up the window cover as we were already getting ready for landing at Dublin Airport. I got home around 3 PM and spent most of the day unpacking and clearing things away.

So that’s it. The end of my trip. As promised I will have a shoplog up as soon as possible and if I feel like it I will also write a post summing up my high/ lowlights per city.