Laid-Back Outbound

When I was awoken by the morning sunshine today, I decided to get out of Manhattan after week-long changing weather. Since I arrived in the city two months ago, I've stepped out of the island for only a few times, partly because there are too many exciting things in Manhattan to get you bored and partly because it's kind of a "big" plan you have to make for seeing around outside the city yet without a car. But each of the few times was worthwhile and refreshing experience.

The first getaway was taking the famous ferry to Staten Island on the first weekend after I arrived. I got up early the Sunday morning and excitedly geared myself up as a tourist. When I hit South Ferry at 11:27, the waiting lobby had been so crowded that I doubted whether we could all get on the ferry. Luckily, it turned out a big three-decked boat and a pleasant journey. What still stuck in my mind was not being surrounded by over-excited tourists from all over the world, but a good number of locals who took the ferry for routines or weekend hang-outs. It just reminds me of the classic street scene of a foreign tourist taking photos curiously at the street where a middle-aged Shanghai man is reading local newspapers with a tea cup at hand. The laid-back feeling in the mixed chaos makes it stand out further.

After two months of city life, I tried to switch my tourist mind channel to the local channel. So today I headed out to Wave Hill, one of the 50 things to do in New York city, according to Time Out New York. The garden looked beautiful on the website, but I had little clue how far that was. I searched the place on Google map, one of the most used tools for me in the city, and hopped on a nearby bus to start the small outbound advernture.

Built as a country home in 1843, Wave Hill House was bought by a partner of J.P. Morgan named George Perkins. Over decades, the property got developed into a well-designed land with magnificent vistas. You can see across Hudson river from the garden. Later, the Perkins-Freeman family deeded Wave Hill to the City of New York, which makes it a public garden with a big area of preserved woods and plant conservancy now.

I've become a park zealot since I came to New York, which you might have noticed in the past post. There are a great number of parks, not only in Manhattan but all over the 5 boroughs as well. But there's some nuance between parks. In the center of the city, parks are usually small and dense, serving as meet-up spots or hot events for locals. If you go a little bit further out, you are very likely to see a variety of ecological views and different group programs.

In the Wave Hill today, there was a group of primary school kids playing some kind of treasure hunt game and learning about nature under the lead of an instructor. Another group of visitors gathered together to practice Tai Chi, which seems quite popular in the city now, under the instruction of a Chinese-looking teacher.

And me? I walked on the paved sidewalks around the whole garden and spent an hour reading Made to Stick on the lawn chair, with Hudson river in sight and grass-scented fresh air pleasing my nose. With noon time approaching, the drizzle and later heavy rain washed the garden into a quieter place and added a new scent of rain into the air. That's the laid-back Saturday I enjoyed. I hope you've had or will have your laid-back moment during this weekend.