Travel dates: June, 2022
Milo turned 20 (!) just before we left for this trip, so I guess I should really call this post “A Day in Brooklyn with Kids, Teens, Young Adults, and Middle-aged People.” But I’m not gonna.
Anyway. We had a lot of ideas about what to do with our days in New York, and we didn’t get around to most of them for one reason or another. The main reason is probably that we had too many ideas, and doing all of them wasn’t so much realistic. In addition to regular tourism, we had friends to see and a Gus concert at Carnegie Hall to watch, so aside from that we managed our Statue of Liberty day and then one day doing tourist stuff in the city. This was the lone day when the ferry was running from Liberty Harbor during our stay. The ferry drops you off on the southern end of Manhattan, so we decided a foray into Brooklyn made sense, and we ended up spending a few hours at the fabulous New York Transit Museum and then walking across the Brooklyn Bridge before making our way back to the RV Park (by train on the way back), and this made for a pretty great day.
The New York Transit Museum is a museum in an old subway station, so of course I’ve been wanting to check it out ever since I first learned of its existence. We met up with one of Dave’s friends from college during our visit and told him we’d gone and he said, “I thought that was just somewhere kids go on field trips.” So I’m here to tell you that the New York Transit Museum is fun for all ages. Unless there is some age where you don’t appreciate getting to walk through a seemingly endless series of retired subway cars from all eras, but if that age exists I never want to be it.
First you get to go inside through an entrance that’s like a real subway entrance! So fun!
Then the upper floor has exhibits all about the history of transit in NYC. Have you ever wanted to take an interactive deep dive into the history of subway turnstiles?! No? Well, probably you do now.
There was also a cool (temporary?) exhibit with signs from subways all over the world trying to get people to behave themselves on public transit. Like don’t litter, don’t play loud music, don’t take up two seats. Etc. It was fascinating and amusing, but I took no pictures of it for some reason. Here’s some other signs instead:
There is an extensive kids’ area, too, where you can pretend to drive old buses and such. I got the impression that this is a place where locals bring toddlers to kill time in a fun and educational manner.
And then! You go down another level and there are old subway cars on old subway tracks. Like…so many. With incredibly detailed signs telling you everything you could ever possibly want to know about the history of the New York City subway system. Kids can pick up a scavenger hunt if they’d rather do something like that instead of reading very long signs.
This one was my favorite. I like the blue:
Heh heh…festival of gas:
If you had told me before I visited the transit museum that there would be so many old subway cars that I would get a little tired of them and not even go in every single one, I probably wouldn’t have believed you. But it happened. The cars stretched on for literally miles. Not really. But a long way.
When we finally tore ourselves away from the trains, we made our way (on foot) to the Brooklyn Bridge, stopping to eat sandwiches that we’d packed in a park on the way. Walking across the bridge was really cool and also really crowded.
Although apparently I was mostly trying to take pictures that made it look like there were fewer people than there actually were, so most of my pictures don’t reflect that it was crowded. but it was!
Anyway, you can walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, and it’s fun, and there are great views. Of this other bridge, which I hear is also nice to walk across and less crowded and gives you views of…the Brooklyn Bridge! I couldn’t remember so I looked it up; it’s the Manhattan Bridge!
It’s about a 1.3 mile walk in one direction, so a pretty quick walk. After the bridge we kept walking to the World Trade Center to catch the PATH train back to Jersey City.
Next up: onward to Newfoundland!
maybe you would like to pin this?
I love bridges, famous or otherwise, and I love transit museums of all types. Very envious.