Governors Island...

On a very, very VERY hot July 4th morning we went on a little trip to Govenors Island. It seemed only right to go and visit the most colonial feeling part of New York on July 4th.

Governors Island is a 172 acre island off the coast of Brooklyn (saying the coast of Brookly makes it sound like there are nice beaches all around the edge, there aren't). The little stretch of water between Brooklyn and the island is called Buttermilk Channel (I'm not sure why though).

I'd not realised just how easy it is to get to the island, from out apartment you just take the G train a few stops and then walk just under a mile to the pier, hop on the free water taxi and then 5 minutes later you're there!

It was a scorcher of a day, so waiting in a queue with the sun beating down on our necks wasn't the greatest feeling, but it was well worth it because Governors Island is beautiful. I thought it felt a lot like Jersey or Sark, it feels very peaceful, very green, very friendly and some of the buildings look fairly similar.

I've been on Wikipedia to do some research and have found out the island used to be used by the British Colonial assembly for New York's Royal Governors, and from 1783-1966 it was used as a US Army post. Then from 1966-1996 is was used by the US Coast Guards - now it's a New York landmark and has a preservation trust looking after it.

Tom had done some research and found out the Rosanne Cash (daughter of Johnny) was playing a free concert in the afternoon, and I'd noticed that She & Him (the band with Zooey Dechannel in it) was playing a free concert after that.

Unfortunately the tickets for She & Him sold out before the time that they were supposed to be released, but we did catch a bit of Rosanne Cash playing infront of the lawn inbetween some of the islands houses.

A lot of people go to Governors Island for the day, taking a picnic and hiring bikes for a couple of hours to cycle round the 5 miles of cycle path on the island, so that's exactly what we did - we made ourselves some sandwiches and after some research Tom found us a very suitable mode of transport for our island exploring...

As you can see, the views from the island a rather fantastic - we pulled over to have a look out at the water and the boats sailing past the Statue of Liberty...

The pedalling was a bit hard going (some of us were pedalling harder than others... Abi?), but the views we were getting made it completely worth it. It was such a perfect day to be exploring the island.

It was lovely seeing people enjoying themselves on the island, cycling around, playing football, playing frisby or tennis, it was very peaceful and the whole island has a very calm and friendly atmosphere... well, it did until we started zooming round in our Quadcycle!

After our legs gave way from all the pedalling we took our bike back and mooched around for a little while. We had planned on going to see She & Him, they were supposed to hand wrist bands out at 3.30pm but for some reason they started giving them out at 1pm, so they'd all gone by the time we got there. Still, it gave us a bit more time to explore and I think we would have been burning in the sun if we'd been standing out in the sun for the whole time.

There are lots of little areas of the island that have a group of houses surrounding a communal lawn, it must have been lovely to live there and have a little island community. I'm not sure what the houes are used for now, maybe they're still occupied - they all look like they've been well looked after anyway.

This was the Commanding Officers residence - complete with cannons!

One of the lovely yellow houses had been turned into a little shop selling lots of different crafty things designed and made by local artists. Some of the things in the shop had been on sale at the Renegade Craft Fair that I went to the other month.

The windows of this house were beautiful, they had tiny little gold anchors painted across them...

You can see the rocking chair out on the porch through the window, and the handmade croché blanket laying over the back, it was a picture perfect old American house.

Governors Island was beautiful and is such a little gem in the middle of New York, it couldn't feel more different to Manhattan with all the skyscrapers and the noise, or Brooklyn with all the hipsters. It was a different world, one that I'm sure Abi and I will be going back to very soon.