15th April 2019

Andrew and I woke at 5am, to a huge storm outside. Torrential rain, thunder and lightening - very dramatic.

Another morning where we think we will be up and out super early … but NO. This time we fell back to sleep and woke at 8am. Andrew on the coffee run, and this morning we have doughnuts and a brownie as we have a special tour planned. A Pizza walking tour in Brooklyn.

But first - let’s play the change hotel room game. We just were not happy in the other room. It was stuffy - the air con was broken, and it wasn’t very clean - so we did the usual - asked to change, and they said yes, so we packed up the room and took our cases to the porter for storage until we returned.

We have always fancied exploring Brooklyn, but had always had reservations about it, mainly due to its reputation of being crime ridden. We had found this tour on AirBnB and it looked great. Five pizza places in Brooklyn whilst taking in local street art. What’s not to love? Sign us up.

We got to Penn with time to spare, and took the subway to Bedford Avenue on Line 3 of the subway. Two stops to go and we noticed people getting on looking mighty wet. The rain had returned with full force. We braved the street and ducking in and out of insalubrious doorways we found a shoe store that sold umbrellas. Thank you for that, whoever was looking down on us. So a quick shake off of our coats and a warm coffee inside us and we were ready to meet our guide Danni.

Danni was a pretty young German lady who had been living in Brooklyn for 2 years and was passionate about pizza. REALLY passionate. She told us how she had made it her mission to find the best pizza in New York, and she was going to impart that knowledge to us.

She gave us some history around the pizza sold as a slice in early NY history. Many construction workers at the time could not afford to buy the full ‘pie’ and would ask the restaurateurs to sell them a slice. This soon caught on and pizza was sold by the slice and wrapped in newspapers to take away.

We started the tour in Wlliamsburg, and our first stop was Joe’s.

This was introduced to us as the American Slice. It was plain cheese with tomato sauce and very thin. It wasn’t soggy, but had a nice brown base.

It was absolutely delicious. She said that American slices will never need any additional toppings or seasonings. The famed ‘dollar slice’ that you see advertised usually uses inferior ingredients and therefore you need to add sauce, oregano or salt. Everyone in the group (around 15) agreed that it was superb.

On to our next stop. Vinnie’s.

Here we were asked to couple up with someone who might like the same flavour so we could share. Now, Andrew is Mr Chilli, and Oli and I are Mr & Mrs Plain, so it left Andrew to find a friend. It didn’t take long for him to find someone to share a chicken and blue cheese slice. Oli and I shared Ranch (chicken and BBQ sauce with cheese). The base of this was much more crunchy, more like a toast texture. It was bit too cheesy for me (I know - why go on a pizza tour when you hate cheese), so Oli ate mine and loved it The venue of Vinnie’s was great - a real cafe (read CAFF for CAFAY). So unassuming, but behind those doors lies a genius cooking pizza.

Next stop - ‘Best Pizza’

Here we had two tasters. First a taste of Grandma’s slice. This was a very rich and thick focaccia style bread with thick tomato sauce and cheese, Gorgeous but you can imagine that in large quantities can become sickly. Next, the white slice. A rather strange looking thing. It is the base, followed by mozzarella and ricotta cheese, with caramelised onions. Then cooked in a brick oven (very hot) then after baking, topped with pecorino cheese (which stinks) and sesame seeds. Not a tomato in sight. I tried it, but it was way too cheesy. Oli wouldn’t even touch it, so Andrew got an extra few slices!

We then took the subway two stops to a new ‘neighborhood’ and were in an area called Bushwick. This area had originally been really rough and dirty. One of the tenants of the buildings had had the idea to decorate each of the buildings with street art and the Bushwick Collective was born. The area is now known in the world of street art for a place to have your work shown. Artists are invited once a year to redo the area, so the art stays there for one year. It is now an honour to be invited to paint a building facade.

The area has improved and is now a place for independent businesses to start - there are coffee shops, small cafes and even a micro brewery.

Our next pizza place was Artichokes.

Artichoke Pizza have their own secret recipe for their pizza sauce. Having tried it, i can say that they can keep their secret. The pizza has a thick dense base. It is very rich with a creamy sauce. It was very cheesy. Again, Andrew benefitted from Oli and I being less adventurous.

Final stop and a short walk through the street art was Roberta’s

Roberta’sis on the site of an old car mechanics, and just looks like a little door from the outside. Open the door and you are presented by a huge area with two massive pizza ovens and lots of benches full of people eating pizza!

Roberta’s pizza is a traditional Neopolitan style pizza. Thin and less uniform in its toppings. It is just tomato, basil and cheese, but more haphazardly strewn on the top. It was a hit.

That was the end of the tour - two and a half hours of walking, eating and talking. And finding out the Brooklyn is just like any other place in the world - some nice parts and some parts you should avoid. We would definitely come back here.

We travelled back on the subway with Danni, who gave us directions to our next stop, The Brooklyn Public Library. I had seen the building on various instagram pages before and it looked interesting, and we thought as we were in Brooklyn we could take a look. We didn’t realise that Brooklyn is so big compared to Manhattan, but we decided to stick to plan and ride the subway there. Thanks to Danni’s excellent directions we were there in no time. What a sight!

It was built in 1941 after being housed in various locations since 1852. It is completely public funded and even on a Monday afternoon it was packed. Well used (even if mainly for the wifi) it clearly provides a service to the people of Brooklyn. It is full of beautiful wood inside and very grand indeed.

Back on the subway and our next planned stop was One World Trade Center - also known as the Freedom Tower.

We had timed tickets for this - now the tallest building in Manhattan, we were due to go up up up. We first made a stop at the original site of the twin towers destroyed on 11 Sept 2001. The fountains that are there mark the floor area covered by the towers and the names of the victims are written all around the fountains which are simple and continuous. It is a simple but moving tribute. The odd thing is the amount of people taking selfies. I am not sure that felt right to me. The white structure in the photo (the Oculus) is designed to look like a dove taking flight.

It is a tricky thing, the 9/11 stuff. I feel as though we should visit the museum and it would be an education for Oliver for sure - but I know for certain how upset I will be. I still find the footage of that day and the aftermath so horrifying.

Maybe we will.

We went into the visitor center of the new One World Trade Center to be told that due to high winds, nobody was going up and to come back in half an hour or to change for another day. We were a bit disappointed but decided to go and get a drink and come back. So we entered the huge shopping area under the building and there, like a mirage was the Apple store. The Air Pod headphones that are sold out across New York?? They had just come into stock - so cue one very excited teenager and one out of three of us had forgotten that we weren’t going up the World Trade Center.

We ventured back to see if there was any news on the wind, and asked to wait a bit longer, and our patience paid off, as 15 minutes later, an hour later than planned, we walked into the large lift, ready to ride 102 floors in 45 seconds. Ears popped, we were shown to an area with a large screen for us to watch (we thought) a film about the tower.

SPOILER ALERT - IF YOU INTEND TO VISIT THE TOWER, SCROLL PAST THIS TO THE PHOTOS

There was a short film showing lots of aspects of NY and then the screen rose to reveal the skyline of NY - 102 floors up. There was an audible intake of breath from everyone and we tried to take in what we were seeing. Right across the Hudson river, across to New Jersey. Most ‘up high’ things you can do in Manhattan show the dense buildings and streets, this is the only one I have seen that shows the open space that surrounds this crazy city. Breathtaking views.

We took in as much as we could of every part of the view and then made our way back down.

We treated ourselves to a taxi from there to 12th St and 2nd to John’s of 12th Street, a traditional Italian restaurant that has been serving food since 1908.

We ordered pasta all round and a few drinks and we were feeling very happy with our day. Not as much walking as yesterday, plus a better sleep and we felt great.

Back to our hotel for a new room, which is much nicer and looking forward to tomorrow.