Note to Self: City Walking Requires Good Shoes!

Yesterday, my wife and I caught the 10:16 AM train to Penn Station, then took the Number 2 subway to Brooklyn—our original plan was to see the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens and then walk past where our son Alex works (but he was working from home, inside his girlfriend's tiny apartment in the East Village, so we decided to just meander around Brooklyn and then meet them later for dinner) and it turns out the distances in Brooklyn are quite epic—we walked to the far side of Prospect Park, past the many beautiful Park Slope mansions, for lunch at a hipster/dive bar called The Double Windsor (we split a field pea salad and a fried catfish sandwich, both excellent—and I had a couple locally brewed beers, a Finback IPA, which was fantastic, crisp and delicious, and Wild East King of the North, a rich amber—both great beers, which I will definitely try again) and then we walked back through Prospect Park, which is enormous and wooded—and while there was intermittent rain, the main problem was the humidity-- we kept taking our rain jackets on and off, and I realized, once again, I had worn the wrong shoes for city walking—I wore an old pair of trail hikers, when I should have worn a NEW pair of sneakers . . . but we made it back to the Botanic Gardens, and saw many beautiful vistas, roses, tropical plants, orchids, bonsai trees, cacti, Japanese ponds and archeitecture, etcetera . . . we will defintely have to visit again when the weather is better and my feet and knees hurt less; we then walked down Flatbush Avenue, which seemed more like an extended version of New Brunswick than Manhattan-- familes and restaurants of every ethnicity-- and we got some coffee at Anikii's Coffee Shop-- great coffee-- but only one table, out in front, and it started to rain again-- by this point my knee was really hurting, but I limped back up Flatbush to the Brooklyn Museum, where we sat for a bit until the rain stopped, then we took the 3 Subway to the F Subway-- saw all the people of the world, including a group of cheerful and informative nursing students that looked like they were out of a 1990s multicultural Gap ad—and then we stepped out into the hip hip East Village neighborhood—and it was full of children, youngsters everywhere, out on a Friday night, waiting in line to get into a bar named Schmuck, and we went to the spot my son is living— - his girlfriend's law school apartment—so SHE has a room mate and this place is TINY—Alex has his clothes in a kitchen cupboard; he's looking for a place near where he works, but it's tough, and this apartment is very convenient because all he has to do is get on the F train—he'll figure it out, I'm sure, since he's such an adult—he actually made reservations for us! at an Italian place called Giano, which makes homemade pasta—it was delicious, and we had a great time at dinner . . . the jocund old waiter was so Italian, both in manner and accent, that he seemed straight out of Central Casting—and then we hung out a bit in the tiny apartment and caught another ancient Jersey Transit train back to New Brunswick-- Titi took care of us and took us down on the elevator before the crowds so we could stake a seat, and good thing she did—the train was packed, standing-room-only . . . we had a double two-seater, but Catherine felt bad for a young lady in nursing gear on crutches, so we let her squash in with us, and then I did the Spelling Bee to take my mind off my sore knee, and I achieved Genius level with only moments to spare (illicit!) and we walked up the hill and back to Highland Park—28,000 steps . . . today I went and bought some new Brooks running shoes, for reffing and these kinds of city walking trips, which I suppose will be more frequent now that we have a child living in the Big Apple.