Maria and I got up at 5 a.m. Saturday to drive to Albany and take a beautiful Amtrak ride along the Hudson River into Manhattan. We spent much of the day walking. We walked the length of the High Line and back, this is perhaps my favorite project of urban imagination. The High Line is a re-imagined and restored former elevated freight train track that ran along the lower West Side of Manhattan.

The High Line rail line opened in the 1930’s and closed in the 1980’s, it ran right through the center of commercial and residential blacks and was restored by committed neighbors and residents and the city government. The High Line runs from 34th street to St. John’s terminal at Spring Street. It is am amazing experience to walk through it, it weaves right alongside apartment and office windows – there is an astounding amount of construction in that neighborhood, and there are stunning views of the city East and West while walking.

You don’t feel as if you are traveling over or under the city, it is all around you.

Many of the tracks have been preserved and now serve as planters for trees and various art projects, the High Line was jammed with tourists from all over the world today. It ends at the new Whitney Museum, where we went, and we had lunch with my daughter Emma at a cool Mexican restaurant.

It is great to see Em, our lives have taken us in different directions and places, I am quite proud of her and we had a great time catching up. I think my job as a father is to see her off on her own life, not tangled up in mine. If she can live a successful, independent and loving life, then that is a job well done. And she is.

She is so much at home in New York, she would be lost up in my beautiful and mostly forgotten county. The weather was sunny and cool, I got some big and painful blisters for my trouble, I ended up hobbling some, it was well worth it.

After lunch, Maria and I stopped into a half-dozen galleries and then made our way back to the train. Is was just what we needed, a change of scenery, an infusion of museums, art, and a dose of urbanity. A great day.