Mr TBTAM and I left the girls home studying this past Sunday afternoon and rode our biking season swan song south along the West Side Greenway. A perfect day for a perfect ride along the Hudson to Battery Park and back.
While the ride north on the Greenway is an idyllic park ride, the route south along the Hudson is a fascinating ride along a busy and increasingly beautiful waterfront, encompassing urban gardens, cruise ship and Ferry docks, tourist attractions, museums and skyline views that will satisfy visitors and natives alike.
Here is a list of the sites we passed along our route – The Intrepid, The Circle Line Boat tour, the cruise ship docks, the Heliport, Frank Gehry’s Office Building, Chelsea Pier, Battery Park City, the World Trade Center Site, the Museum of Jewish Heritage, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island boat rides and The American Indian Museum.
If sports are what you love, you can rent a kayak, take a sailing lesson, practice your skateboard moves, hit a bucket of balls, bike, walk or bowl. The only thing missing from the Greenway as far as I am concerned are great waterfront restaurants.
Much of the Greenway has separate biking and walking paths. This makes for easy riding, although the walking paths tend to go closer to the water and through some lovely gardens along the way. You’ll need to watch out for cars crossing the path near the docks and along Chelsea Pier, but on a weekend this is not a big problem.
My favorite part of the ride is Battery Park City. I remember when this gorgeous garden-living spot was a big old empty landfill, the site of the No Nukes Rally I attended in 1979.
If you’re visiting NYC and want to ride the Greenway, I’d recommend renting a bike at Pier 84 at 44th Street on the West Side and heading either north or south from there. Bike and Roll has rental locations at several spots along the NYC Greenway, and runs both guided and self-guided bike tours of NYC. You can also rent bikes at one of over a dozen other spots in the city and head into the Greenway anywhere along the route.
Happy Biking!
NYC Biking Links
It snowed here today 🙁 No bike for me. Maybe tomorrow!
Your ride looks lovely; it’s still green there!
This is also the route of the Avon 2-day 40 mile Breast Cancer Walk. For five years I’ve treked this path each October and have enjoyed its growth, renewal and survivorship, along with my own.
Your pictures ar beautiful.
I blame Jackson Browne for the dismal lack of Nuclear Powered Generators in the nation which discovered nuclear power. If the country had chosen to go the way France did, we’d not be complaining about importing Middle Eastern Oil.
Lovely photos btw.