Princeton is a small town with a large, prestigious university and it is a pretty place, made all the more so by the present displays of cherry blossom in today’s sunshine. It is trying, quite effectively, to look like Oxford. Ornate stone buildings with fancy towers surround grassy quadrangles, and the high street is full of upmarket shops selling brands like Barbour. It is only a few miles distant, but well heeled Princeton felt like a world away from its downtrodden neighbour, Trenton. They are two separate microcosms of a deeply divided society.
I try to be nothing if not open minded, and so Princeton was an ideal place to enjoy green eggs and ham, a brunch option I selected in the trendy little cafe where I stopped. And, yes, it turns out that I do like green eggs and ham, Sam I am, alongside a good cup of tea. It felt like Princeton, of all places, would be able to provide that, and the results were more than acceptable.
After Princeton I was treated to a couple of hours following a well made path along the side of the D&R canal, no longer operational but still full of water and ideal for canoes and the like. It made for a long and cycle friendly green corridor that advanced me towards the edge of the New Jersey overspill of the New York urban sprawl. Long, residential streets finally gave way to a modern suspension bridge that took me across onto Staten Island, the most suburban of New York city’s five boroughs.
From the bridge, across the container port, I caught my first distant view of the Manhattan skyline. It seemed rather incongruous when viewed through wire mesh, a gaggle of crane derricks and piles of shipping containers, but that is unmistakably what I saw. New York’s hinterland is not the prettiest.
Several miles later, I also saw the towers of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge rising above the horizon at the entrance to New York bay. It remains the United States’ longest single span suspension bridge and marks the entrance to the open sea. My nearby Airbnb was in the basement of a house on an unassuming residential street. I was about a fifteen minute cycle from the Staten Island to Manhattan ferry terminal, but it felt out of reach for me tonight. That treat – and a day off in New York City – lay in wait for me tomorrow.
..days off? 🙂