Monday, May 3, 2010

City Island Wander

I read about this little town in the Bronx called City Island. It was described as a chunk of New England transported to the Bronx. Many of my young summer vacations were to Maine, and Atlantic Canada is as similar to New England as you can get without the accent, so to get a break from the big city and get a little sense of home, I made a Wander up to City Island. It lived up to the hype for me - just a lot more Yankees caps then a real New England town.

Click here for the wander map.

This place is not the scary Bronx my parents warned me about before I moved. City Island is a tiny island in the Long Island Sound, attached to Pelham Bay Park by a bridge. Its lovely; old New England style houses with actual yards (sometimes even the type that are on all sides of the house, and not just 5 feet in front or in back), seafood restaurants, marinas full of sail boats and a nice little main street with a street fair, pubs and lots of antique stores (if you love old nautical stuff). Apparently in the 1760s it was owned by Benjamin Palmer who wanted to turn it into a port to rival New York, but the American Revolution killed those great plans. City Island did manage to grow through shipbuilding and oyster fishing, and its isolation from the rest of New York let it keep its unique atmosphere.

We took the 6 train all the way to the end, Pelham Bay Park, my farthest excursion to date. From there we h hopped on a bus which took us all the way to the southern point of the island. Pretty long trip from the UES (in more ways than 1) and since we were greeted with a fantastic view...
(looking across to long island, there's a tiny island with a lighthouse on it)
(the Throngs Neck Bridge to Queens behind the remains of an abandoned pier)
...and a seafood reasturant with outdoor picnic table from which to enjoy that view, we decided to have a bit.
Best fish and chips I've found here so far.

After lunch we headed north, up and down some perfectly manicured streets lined with beautiful houses.
At the end of every street, you get a view like this:

or this:
My biggest complaint about the island is that at the end of a number of these streets is a beach, but they're always blocked by huge gates and ominous signs indicating that they're private property and that you best not try to enter.
 With such nice views there should be at least on little public beach. I guess you're supposed to go up to Orchard Beach, but that's pretty far away.
We continued winding up and down these little side streets (they're all dead ends, so you can't really make any loops) until we hit the main commercial drag.

I loved it. As you can see from the shots, there's quite a bit of traffic on the main street. We noticed that there were a lot of high school graduation celebrations starting up in the restaurants as we passed. I'm not sure if this is always the case, or if it was just the graduations, but this place got crazy packed around dusk on this Saturday. The line of cars onto the island went all the way off the island, past the park and onto the Pelham Bridge Road, and it was barely moving.

We walked past one last marina....
...and over the City Island Bridge - I insisted on walking the bridge, partly for the photo-op and partly because I love bridges.
Just for you information, if you're one of the few people like me who didn't drive onto the island, get the bus back to Pelhem from the City Island side of the bridge not the Bronx side. I found this out the hard way. I thought there would be a bus stop somewhere just on the other side of the bridge - I really thought it had stopped there on the way onto the island. There isn't. The side walk just ends, and you end up walking next to essentially a highway until you come to the mexican family at the roundabout. The mexican family is the only indication that there is in fact a bus stop at that location - no bench, no sidewalk - just a mexican family standing in the middle of what appears to be a huge lawn next to a highway.

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