Tip to Tip
I return from my unintentional hiatus with a tale of exploration. 19 and a half miles worth.
This Memorial Day weekend, my family decided we were going to do the tip to tip walk in Manhattan, which is when you start at the tippy top and walk all the way to the tippy bottom in one day. The task seemed a little outlandish, but we weren’t daunted.
We took the 1 train all the way up to 215th street, the last stop in Manhattan, in Inwood. A few of us fell asleep on the ride, which didn’t bode well for the journey ahead. However, we weren’t as unfortunate as the man sitting across from us on the train, who was subway rocking so intensely that his body almost folded in half. You see many characters in New York City.
The day began a little later than anticipated, so it began at Inwood Bagels to satisfy the hunger already turning us all into grumps. We ate as we walked, heading south on Broadway until we hit Fort Tryon Park, home to The Cloisters. The park challenged us with some hills early on in the trip, and we got a little lost seeking The Cloisters, so we only saw them from afar. My mom and I pledged to return north this summer and see them in all their supposed glory.
We walked through Washington Heights and passed the Morris-Jumel Mansion, which we espied from down a hill, but my sister made sure to take a picture for her TikTok anyway.
We moved over to St. Nicholas Avenue, where we passed St. Nicolas Park and a couple of us took our first bathroom break of the day among Memorial Weekend barbequers. Comfortably in Harlem, we walked along and through Morningside Park, hoping for a peek of Columbia, but we came out too far south. (It turned out to be a day of just missing some of the things we wanted to see, and taking more steps than necessary to do so.)
We walked down Broadway for a while, eventually stopping for another pee break at the Trader Joe’s on 72nd. Julia and I marveled at the size of the Trader Joe’s, which put ours to shame. We bought large water bottles to fill up our reusable ones—which yes, defeats the purpose, but my mom placed the bottles on the side of the garbage can in the store with the hopes that someone would think to at least recycle them.
For lunch, we split up between Playa Bowls and Juice Generation on Amsterdam, and then we walked east into Central Park to find a place to eat and sit down. At this point, we were all very tired and there were more than a few complaints circulating. But we were only about halfway done.
We ate lunch by the Strawberry Fields memorial while a lady nearby played John Lennon songs on her guitar. Someone had placed actual strawberries around the perimeter of the memorial, and we got in some good people watching as dozens crouched down to get a picture with the ground.
We rode out Central Park through to Columbus Circle, where we decided to walk straight west and get a glimpse of the boats that were docked for Fleet Week. We saw one big ship with helicopters parked on top and a huge submarine. My mom said you couldn’t pay her a billion dollars to go into the sub, but I say, if someone is offering…
I know this is reading like a “and then, and then, and then,” but that’s what it felt like. No matter how long we walked, there was still another leg of the journey ahead. So stick around.
We walked along the river well into the 20s, battling the sun all the while. I, as always, was wearing black, which didn’t seem like such a good decision at certain moments. While we could’ve hugged the river for the rest of the trip, there was more to see. At 23rd street we cut east to the CVS on 10th Avenue, so Julia could buy some blister band-aids.
For some reason we decided to take a bulk of the rest of the journey on 7th Avenue, so we walked east again, even though our destination was beckoning in the south. We did a lot of this crosstown walking, which is why our mileage ended up so much higher than that of others who decide to journey tip-to-tip. We thought we could handle it. And we could. Barely.
We kept walking south and south and south until we decided to head west again to see Brookfield Place, where Julia works and where Katie will work starting next month (yay!). Though, I do feel a little left out.
The end of our journey was a bit anticlimactic, because they are doing so much construction at the Battery. It took us another half mile of roaming to find a place where The Statue of Liberty was slightly viewable and able to be captured in our final family selfie of the day.
On our trek, we passed 46 pizza places. We counted. Ultimately, we ended up at number 47 for some great, well-deserved slices, and we Ubered home, because none of us could even imagine walking ten minutes to the nearest subway.
It was a long day—over 42,000 steps taken, according to my Apple Watch. But we really got to explore NYC, see new neighborhoods, and challenge ourselves to find the fun in the difficult. Would I do it again? Maybe in the fall. For now, I am wearing my own blister band aids, grateful in knowing that no walk I take any time soon will even compare. Go us!