Taking our leave with New York

-

Normally, we never go to rooftop bars in New York. They are often way too posh and bling-bling for our taste.

But tonight was our last night in the city after several glorious weeks, and as the evening was lovely and spring-like, we wanted to take our leave with a last look at the Manhattan skyline.

The Water Tower rooftop bar was suggested to us by a couple of hipster girls we met on a street in Williamsburg. 

We tagged along - and the bar, formed like one of the iconic New York water towers and sitting on top of the fashionable Williamsburg Hotel, turned out to be fantastic. 

When it opened in 2019, it was supposed to be a super-exclusive, reservation-only place that branded itself with $150 cocktails and $500 caviar tastings. That was before Covid hit.



Today, the bar is still exactly as lovely situated as on its opening night, but the expensive suits and ultra-high stilettos are gone. Now the motto is 'Drink with a local' and the Water Tower has turned into a very fun, youngish, informal, and hip place - and its cocktails are within our pay grade.

We had a few while standing on the wraparound outdoor balcony and taking in the panoramic view.


These last weeks in NYC: Yes, there was an exploding manhole in Times Square, and - yes - we read about awful, seemingly random attacks in the subway and the generally rising crime rate.

But New York City is still deep down on the list of the most violent cities in the US and after the years of Covid, and with almost half a million jobs still missing post-pandemic, we firmly believe the city is coming back on its tracks. It feels almost as vibrant and energetic as we remembered it to be the last many times we have visited.

Tomorrow our plane is taking off towards Europe, but we will definitely be back soon. 

On this, we clank our glasses, as the sun settled beyond Manhattan

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Night under the full moon: A unique Parisian gathering

-
Image
  The other night I was invited to a so-called Full Moon Party in the center of Paris. The host was a guy Rita and I met, when we, a couple of years ago, stayed on his houseboat a bit up the Seine. He arranges these casual parties at the middle of the Pont des Arts and he has done so, come rain or come moonshine, every month for the last many years. As I approached the iconic bridge, now mercifully devoid of its plague of "love locks," I was greeted by a cacophony of excited chatter in a United Nations potpourri of accents.  French people as well as expats from many corners of the globe mingled freely, their laughter and chatter forming a symphony of human connection that was actually quite infectious. As I accepted a glass of wine from a beaming Spanish astrophysics student, I pondered the curious phenomenon before me.  Here we were, a motley crew of strangers, united by nothing more than our shared presence in this city and our willingness to gaze skyward toge...
Read more

Stumbling into serenity: The secret garden of Saint-Serge

-
Image
The other day I walked the streets of the edgy, regenerated Villette area of Paris, and here, on one of its busy streets, I stumbled upon what seemed like a portal opening into another time. Entering through an unassuming gate, and going down a narrow,  semi-private alley, I was transported from the frenetic present into a hidden,  quiet garden that turned out to be the garden of the  Saint-Serge de Radonège Russian Orthodox Church.    Photo: SortirAParis Before me unfolded a scene that could have been plucked from a 19th-century Russian novel: Long-bearded orthodox priests wearing flowing black robes and cylindrical kamilávka hats, moved unhurriedly among the flowerbeds, and a group of elderly parishioners sat in the garden, on rickety chairs, chatting in a melodic blend of Russian and  French. The abrupt transition from bustling street to  tranquil sanctuary was so jarring that I half-expected to find my smartphone transfor...
Read more

Entering the Boros bunker - A mind-altering artistic journey

-
Image
Walking into the massive Boros bunker in Berlin's Mitte is like walking into an ancient, alien tomb. This forbidding concrete monolith, built by the Nazis in 1942,  is now the home of an eccentric private art collection.  Inside the building's almost anthill-like network of  underground corridors and crypts, numerous swirling shapes and colors spark the walls into lurid illuminations.   A flood of phantasmagoric images washes over the senses - kinetic sculptures twisting with reptilian menace, multimedia installations flickering with layered meanings. Each new room opens like a portal into a new creative artistic mind - and the story about the building is as exciting as the art which is  displayed inside it. During the war, the bunker sheltered several thousand  civilians from the massive, nightly bombings that hit Berlin. In 1945 the Red Army repurposed the building for prisoners of war and it later became an East German warehouse. After the wall tumble...
Read more