Wandering Around Brooklyn

We just got back from visiting friends who live in New York and we had an amazing time exploring the city for a few days. It was a short trip; we only had four days, so wanted to spend as much time as possible exploring the “other” Burroughs of the city, trying to balance our time exploring Queens and Brooklyn alongside Manhattan. Our friends live near Prospect Park in Brooklyn, so it was the perfect place to start exploring this side of the city. Our first big day of sightseeing in New York, we picked up a coffee to go and went for a walk into Prospect Park.

Prospect Park is Brooklyn’s equivalent to Central Park in Manhattan. In the 1980s, this was one of the most dangerous places in the city where you were likely to get stabbed, but the city has been revitalized since then, and today this is a beautiful public space with many different places to explore. We walked for about 2 hours and only saw a small fraction of the park. We managed to find some great trails which led us past an old carousel and a beautiful Boathouse on the lake.

We exited the park at the Grand Army Plaza – an Archway monument modeled after the Arc de Triomphe in Paris – which memorializes the Soldiers and Sailors who defended the Union from 1861-1865. We snapped a few pictures here before hopping into the Subway, and transported ourselves to the Brooklyn Waterfront.

This is one of the most underrated views in the city, with the skyscrapers of Lower Manhattan and iconic Brooklyn Bridge as models. This part of town has been massively revitalized in the last few years, and the old piers have been transformed into gardens, basketball courts and public spaces to be enjoyed by everyone. There is a long pathway which follows the waterfront, the perfect place to go for a walk or bike ride without the hectic buzz of the city distracting you.

Our final stop before crossing to Manhattan was the Brooklyn Bridge. This is one of the most popular tourist attractions in the city; you will certainly bump into hundreds of other tourists taking pictures while trying to avoid the bikes speeding along the narrow bike lane. Since we were planning to visit Lower Manhattan anyways, this doubled as both an attraction and a form of transportation. The walk takes about 20 minutes and along the way you’re treated to many incredible views of the the over 100 year old bridge, New York skyline and East River below.

Earlier this week, we posted our photos from this same journey – Prospect Park & the Brooklyn Waterfront – so if you enjoyed this video, please check these out as well. We still have many more pictures and videos to share from our New York trip, so stay tuned for those in the next two or three weeks.

We hope you enjoy!

Wandering Around Brooklyn:

We just got back from visiting friends in New York and we spent a lot of time exploring the other Burroughs, spending a lot of time in Queens and Brooklyn away from the main sights in Manhattan. We didn’t spend our whole visit sightseeing, which meant we got to see a different side of the city than most “tourists” do.

Our second day in the city we decided to go for a walk. We were staying in Brooklyn, so we decided to start the day by exploring Prospect Park for a few hours. We wandered with very little purpose, just wanting to enjoy a different part of the city. During our half day of walking around Brooklyn, we crossed off Prospect Park, the Brooklyn Piers and walked across the Brooklyn Bridge into Lower Manhattan.