...despite our comfortable stay in Reyhaan's excellent studio we move to a downtown hotel for the last night for the sake of airport travel convenience. Smallish but nice room on 10th floor with a terrace (whose door doesn't open though) and welcome cookies plus included breakfast - not bad for NYC.
...we take another walk in the Central Park, see John Lennon's memorial "Imagine" mosaic and are excited to see dedicated jogger lanes
...we travel to Brooklyn for the first time and right on the train as we cross into Brooklyn with a magnificent view of the Brooklyn Bridge out the window we witness an amazing break dance routine by three black guys, who we gladly tip
...we eat at what is hailed as the country's oldest surviving pizzeria - and known as one of the city's best pizzas - Totonno's - it's very basic (think: toilet behind a curtain) and quite pricey but pizza is not bad; Tamara begs to differ;
...we enjoy our first really sunny day and use it to walk around Brighton Beach, watching elderly Russians and Russian Jews doing business at the pier or walking their dogs and watching black and Asian guys fishing with rods off the pier; the pier itself isn't half bad either - wooden and almost as long as the one in Sopot!
...we can see Coney Island's amusement park with the iconic Ferris wheel is still in good shape
...on our way back we visit one of Brooklyn's most upmarket areas - DUMBO (Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass) - a former industrial zone now heavily gentrified and "lofted"all over :) offering majestic views over lower Manhattan across the river;
...we take a train to Jersey to eat dinner with Lucyna and my dad and then are driven back to a station and wait 1h for a night train back to Penn Station. We reach the hotel dead tired.