The Big Finish (Fourth Day, Fifth Leg)

(The Old Guy and Upstate Annie show us the Battery area when it was all piers and commerical trade -- pretty much the view my dad used to see from his office window when he worked as an accountant for a shipping company in the late 1950s.)

As we're entering Battery Park, it occurs to me that we're now stepping back into history by stepping into one of the oldest parts of the city, having walked from the northernmost tip of Manhattan to the Battery on one of Manhattan's newest walkways.  Bowling Green (now a subway stop on the northernmost side of Battery Park), was the town of New Amsterdam's "village green" where the original Dutch settlers played a strange game of knocking down wooden "pins" that were arranged in a triangle with a small ball rolled towards them on the green lawn.  Hmmm!   Being from a 1960s "bowling mad" barely suburban Long Island  family, I can immediately relate.
Though it should be fairly self-evident, the Battery is so named because way, way back -- nearly to the founding of our fair city in the 1600's -- this is where the 15th Century's version of a "star wars" defense system (some huge black canons housed in a round fortress) were ready to ward off invaders (though they did little to stop the British during their first, pre-Beatles invasion in 1776). 

I believe New York City was the only major Colonial city the British conquered during the Revolutionary War...with nary a shot from the massive Battery artilery.   Some of the canons, and the fortress now called Clinton Castle (no, not named after our former president but, I believe, New York State's first governor) are still sitting down there, in a buzzing park that has been fashioned around them.  Today, Castle Clinton is the epicenter of tourist activities as it is here that one buys ones tickets to tour Liberty and Ellis Islands.

Battery is a park filled with monuments to the valorous and the dead...

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..including the below slabs with the names of "the greatest generation" of New Yorkers who perished during World War II.

It is also filled-to-bursting with tourists, especially on this sunny, late fall day, as it is here that ships bound for the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island embark.

It was just beyond the World War II Memorial, strolling on the path next to the River, that I realized we were just about at the exact southern tip of Manhattan...and the end of our quest.  Quite a successful quest it was, as we have demonstrated that yes -- you can now walk from the top to the bottom of Manhattan along the Hudson River, never losing sight of the amazing waterway first spied and navigated by Europeans 400 years ago...and by my band of (mostly) loyal walkers over the past four months.

This called for the ceremonial "end of walk" photo...

...and who better to take it than a "man of letters" (currently a "visiting professor" at Rutgers), Israli-born Dr. Samuel Peleg, with his daughters Efrat and Adelle.

 After we told them about our trek...and this blog, his parting words to us were "Go, Yankees!" (remembering that this last segment of "the walk" was conducted during the World Series).  The New York Yankees (a team that carries a massive chunck of American baseball's glory and legend on its exceedingly well-endowed shoulders) did, indeed, go all-the-way a few nights later to clinch their 27th post-season World Series title at the new, food-friendly Yankee Stadium.  I'm sorry, but playing against other American teams does not a "World Series" make!  And, I also have heard that the Met's new Citi Field in Queens has better pickin's in the food department.  It almost makes me want to take in a game next summer!

So, here OG, Upstate Annie and I are, at the end of our journey, but without any repast this entire walk.  Given that the name of this blog is "Will Walk For Food" not having any food certainly will not do!  We kept walking, past where the Hudson River and East River meet,

and actually took a few steps into our new quest (to see if we can go from the bottom of Manhattan up to the top along the East River -- again, without losing sight of the river during our travels).  We almost stopped at The Restaurant at Battery Gardens, which is a lovely restaurant set among some gorgeous summer flower

gardens with windows looking south and west -- out at Governor's Island, Brooklyn and beyond -- right next to the Staten Island Ferry terminal.  However, the memory of having a lovely, but sadly, last meal here last year with a beloved (now tragically departed) Brazilian cousin (not to mention the fairly costly, but tasty, menu) kept us walking,  We passed "The Big Lebowsky"...

 ...as well as the shrine and pretty little church to honor one of New York's two cannonized Catholic saints, Elizabeth Anne Seaton......and into the canyons of downtown Manhattan.  In keeping with our afternoon's theme of tramping through "Olde NY," we walked over a few blocks (yes, losing sight of any body of water) to the oldest street in New York City -- Stone Street.  Now closed to traffic, the cobble stones are flanked on either side of this one short block by some of the city's oldest buildings...each one housing a restaurant.   Call it the ultimate "food court." There's many cuisines (from quasi-Swedish smorgesbord to French cafe, from American pub-grub to Italian pizzeria -- mostly all owned by one family -- a Greek guy named Harry, who's Harry's Grill is the ultimate Wall Street "insider" steakhouse in the area).  It was that pizzeria, called Adrienne (for Harry's wife, I believe) where we parked our weary carcasses at the outdoor picnic tables, slightly off-kilter and leaning toward one side because of the street's uneven design.We had very thin-crusted, coal-oven baked gems (Adrienne's is regularly considered among the best of the "new guard" of New York pizza-making) and then asked our waiter to take the post-walk, celebratory photo.

So, where do we go from here -- walk-wise and blog-wise -- now that our mission has been accomplished?

That's easy -- to blaze new trails in and around this magnificent island-city that has many secrets to reveal (even for die-hard New Yorkers like my friends and me) -- and "oh so many" places to eat.  As long as the weather holds out, we'll be lacing up our walking shoes every few Sundays to take an early-morning stroll into all the nooks and crannies that make up this big, beautiful, shiny Apple.

In fact, as I write this entry, I am resting my weary bones after another wonderfully sunny and fairly warm day of "bridge-walking."   A few bonus entries are coming as the Old Guy and Nature Girl (yes...she's back) make a pligrimage to the borough of my birth by walking the Brooklyn Bridge into historic Brooklyn, following a trail along the Brooklyn side of the East River, to cross back to Manhattan over the Manhattan Bridge.  Surprises are in store, as usual.  Later...