I had so much fun in Brooklyn that there was no time to write while I was there. It‘s a good problem to have.

Andrew and I left Indianapolis about 3:00 on Tuesday and, as I‘d hoped, the plane was less than half full. It was an uneventful flight, and we landed at LaGuardia about 5:00 Tuesday evening. Rush hour traffic wasn‘t terrible, although it probably added 15 minutes to the trip to the hotel.

We stayed at the Hampton Inn Brooklyn Downtown, which was nothing to write home about. It was clean, and the staff were nice enough, although the lady who checked us in spent two or three minutes finishing a conversation with someone she knew well enough to hug goodbye before she even acknowledged our presence. I reminded myself that it wasn‘t the Midwest, and the rules were different.

We unpacked quickly and headed out to find some dinner. Andrew and I had done a little research before the trip and added some potential stops to an Apple Map we shared. One was a brewery, Randolph Beer, in DUMBO.

Part of my research before the trip was learning that DUMBO means Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, and when they say under, they mean under. It is one really big bridge, and there are a lot of things under it.

The bar was probably less interesting than the story about its neighborhood. Neither of us finished our pint, and we went off in search of some food. We ended up just about a block away at Dumbo Taco. The people there were super friendly, and the tacos were tasty. ‘

The next destination was the Brooklyn Bridge, which is not as easy to find as you would expect. Actually, the bridge itself was easy to find. But the entrance to the pedestrian/bike path was a bit trickier. We found it, though, after only one wrong turn. We walked up a flight of stairs, and we were there! The views were great, but it was not the best conditions for taking pictures. It was dark and cold and raining lightly. Still, we pushed on.

One thing that surprised me about the bridge is how narrow the walking path was. It’s an old bridge, and I’m guessing there was no bike lane when it was built. Now, one half is for bikes and the other half is for pedestrians, which means the pedestrian lane is only a couple people wide. Fortunately, the weather was not great, so there were not a lot of people there.

I liked the skyline (of course), seeing the Manhattan Bridge from the Brooklyn Bridge, and thinking about the amazing engineering that went into creating the structure. We went halfway then turned around. As we got back, we were welcomed to Brooklyn.

We weren’t ready to call it a night yet, so we headed south to a pub we’d added to our map. On the way, we walked through Brooklyn Heights, which was a neat neighborhood.

That fire house with the Santa flying toward it was built in the 19-teens. Another neat thing while we were in Brooklyn is that people had put their Christmas trees out by the curb to be picked up, so the whole place smelled more like a Canadian forest than your stereotypical big city smell.

After the bar we headed back to the hotel, looking forward to our next day in Manhattan.