a ferry fun day

The carefree days of summer will soon come to an end (not that I'm counting) (okay, maybe I am...), so to make the most of what we have left/celebrate that it's almost over, yesterday we went on an adventure. A commuter ferry from the Rockaways to Lower Manhattan recently added a stop in our neck of the woods, so we, along with a lot of our friends, decided to ride it up to the Imagination Playground, located near the South Street Seaport.

Our 1.5 mile walk to the pier took us deep into the industrial part of Brooklyn. Luckily we had Garrett with us to read the signs that pointed the way. We arrived at the pier a few minutes before the boat did, which only built up the kids' excitement.

The boat arrived, and we all boarded and climbed up to the very top. The wind was strong (they don't call this ferry Seastreak for nothing!) and the views were spectacular.

  Looking south. That's the Verrazano Bridge in the background.

The building where Blake works is the pinkish one tucked away in the center of this skyscraper cluster.

The ferry docked at Pier 11, just west of the South Street Seaport, so it was only a short walk to the Imagination Playground. I'd forgotten to bring swimsuits, so we stripped down to the bare essentials so the boys could play in the water. I think, though, that their favorite activity at the playground were the giant foam blocks.

Talk about an inner city playground. Look at that landscape!

This landscape they're building is pretty awesome, too.

We stayed at the playground for a while, then said goodbye to our friends and walked down Water Street to meet Blake for lunch. The only bench outside his building that offered shade was directly across the street from the Fraunces Tavern, an 18th-century building that played an important role in the Revolutionary War.

After lunch we headed back home. This time we took the subway. I have no more photos to share, but I wanted to pause in my narrative to describe what it's like to ride the subway with young children. Actually, I'm going to let Jim Gaffigan describe what it's like, in this comedically accurate excerpt from his recently released book, Dad Is Fat:

"The subway is a fast and economical way to get around Manhattan, but from the moment the turnstile smacks your kid in the head to the time your child terrifies you [or, I might add, a stranger who also terrifies you by harping about your lack of parenting skillz] by almost falling in the gap between the platform and the train, to the lack of interest anyone has in yielding a seat to you, to the kid inevitably licking the subway pole that 800 million filthy hands have touched, to almost missing your stop because it's too crowded to get off and you don't want your kid trampled, to carrying the stroller up three flights of subway station stairs behind people who are moving so slow you have to hold yourself back from stabbing them, to the time you realize that the museum is closed for renovations, this fast, economical, environmentally friendly form of transportation becomes more of a treacherous pilgrimage than a way of getting from point A to point B."

True story.

And then you have to do it all again on the return trip. Which is even more exhausting because you and every little person with you is worn out and whiny. And that is one big reason why the ferry was such an appealing option for at least one leg of our trip.

But to be perfectly honest, the ferry wasn't a much easier option than the subway. It also turned out at the last moment to be more expensive that we'd originally thought. But it was fun, and it took us onto even more fun once we docked in Manhattan, and I suppose that's what matters in the end.