Hello everyone!
The spring is coming! The trees start to bloom, it smells like flowers and people are starting to spend more time outside. How the city changes from one month to another is amazing, the streets are full of colors, smells and people from all over the world. I have never seen such an amazing mix of cultures and food. Even if I have been here for one month It feels like I just arrived, I hope to get used to such a diverse and vibrant city.
I finally took the decision to ride a bike through the city. Here it is almost faster than the public transport, you can find a station every 15 minutes. Cycling is the best option in terms of price if you stay for a few months, but yes, be careful to not take it in the really busy areas. I try to take the bicycle only through Central Park and Riverside Park as the bike lane is totally separated from the road. There is also a great transport network with subway, bus, ferry and cablecar. It is actually really fun to take the ferry, it is exactly the same price as the subway but you can see the views of Manhattan from the river.
Now that I have a better transport method, I could visit most of the neighborhoods in Manhattan, upper west and east, midtown, downtown and Harlem. The contrast between the different areas is fascinating, the mixture of cultures, languages and buildings. The perspective from a local is really different from the one of a person who comes to visit for a short time. When one goes out of the ‘touristic’ areas, one discovers the scale of New York and its huge extension.
One of the things I like the most was to have the possibility to study the DSR projects from inside and outside. It is fascinating to visit their projects and study them presentially until the last small detail. There are many of their projects through the city like the High Line, Lincoln Center renovation, Moma renovation and The Shed. I had the chance to visit one of their latest project at Columbia University guided by the architects that made it possible. I also visited the Shed exhibitions, it was an immersive experience where the public interact with the art, it was really interesting.
Another thing you must know if you come to the city is that Chelsea is the neirborhood of art. It is full of art galleries and they are all free and different. It is fun to go to the openings because the artists are there and they explain their pieces of art, there is also free wine. Most of the galleries are completely open to the outside as they have glass, but there are other more difficult to find. Check always the map if you want to find them all.
This is all for April, see you in the next post!
