Sunday: Ultimate and North Harlem

On Sunday, after wishing my dad a happy father's day and grabbing a bagel from Murray's, I took the subway waaay uptown. After a nice mile hike along the hudson along a bike path (I should rent a bike and circle manhattan!) through riverside park, I spotted my destination: an ultimate game seen previously advertised on craigslist. It was a pretty low-quality game (no stack, no stall even) but it was still lots of fun to get out in the sun and run around anyway. It's been a while. The day was nice, a little warm but nowhere near as humid as it was the week before so really quite pleasant. The people were friendly and gave me some advice of things to see in the area after we were done playing.

The area being washington heights, with fort george and inwood to the north (that's it: the island ends) and harlem to the south. I looked through my guidebook and decided there wasn't much north of me and the only thing north of me worth visiting was the cloisters which I decided to do another day so I started walking a long-zipzag in the generally southerly direction. (whew) First major stop was the Audubon Terrace with its:
* American Academic of Arts and Letters gallery. Free and small, pretty neat, with pieces from everyone they've honored (even Mark Twain and Steinbeck originals). The neatest stuff in my opinion was the architectural plans and models of buildings; one doesn't see that in my places.
* Hispanic Society of America. Museum of all things hispanic. Lots of religious iconography, and a surprising assortment of Roman artifacts, weapons, vases, and money.
* The American Numismatic Society. Closed Sunday. But worth mentioning because numismatic is such a fun word.

Then I wandered into north Harlem. It had a wide assortment of neighborhoods, some with abandoned lots, and others that looked like fancy nineteenth century townhouses, sometimes with only two blocks between them. At times, I was the only white person on the streets. (All others were hispanic or black.) At other times (and some of those first times), the only language I heard was spanish.

Also,
* In one of these historic districts there was the Hamilton Grange -Alexander Hamilton's old house- with neat documentaries and informational panels. Free tours (which were very fast because the house wasn't very big).
* I spent some time at a museum presenting black and african(-american) culture. It was interesting; analysis of the constitution, various movements, slavery and the slave trade, challenges and failures, discrimination, etc.; most interesting was from a very high-level view how similar it was to the jewish culture museum.
* City College is a neat gothic (?) campus. It was pretty empty when I visited, but it did have a campusy feel. I would've said find it was a bit surprising for Manhattan, but really I'm not surprised by much anymore.

By this point I was tired, thirsty, my feet hurt, and, having only eaten a bagel all day, famished. Half of Harlem had been explored and it was a good time to stop given dusk was soon approaching and I didn't know where I should or shouldn't be in harlem after dark.

Now comes the food section of this post. I took the train back to the Hell's Kitchen area where I'd previously spotted a Pakistani restaurant. I found it but it turned out to be an almost-fast-food-like counter place and I didn't want that. Then I looked for a soul food restaurant I heard recommended; sadly, it was closed. Hungrier and hungrier. But I wanted a good sit down place so I headed home to read my past research on restaurant recommendations. On the way home, I passed a Quiznos. A large traditional sounded sooooo good! But I held off, and kept my vow of not eating anything in new york that I could get in the bay area.

After home and research, I went out again. First to a burek place, which also turned out to be closed. It looked so closed, I'd be surprised if it's open anymore.. The backup destination this time was an Italian place called Trattoria Trecolori. It was nice, homey, brick walls. Somewhat elegant. I had the special, a fairly decent rigatoni with a white-winey/oily sauce and shrimp, and a glass of white wine. My only complaint here was that meal came so fast -which isn't that surprising given that it was the special and they were probably pre-preparing it- that it arrived 15 seconds after the bread and gave the whole impression that they were waiting to get rid of that dish they'd already made and also wanted me to leave fast. But after that everything felt relatively okay service-wise. I ate slow and tried to relax and rest my feet.