New York City - Manhattan Bridge

The Manhattan Bridge was built in 1909 and crosses the East River, connecting downtown Brooklyn to Chinatown in Lower Manhattan. It's a busy crossing - the double-decker bridge has seven lanes for vehicle traffic, four subway lines, and walkways for pedestrians and bikes.

The pedestrian walkway provides some good views of the city as you walk across, and has become a popular spot for photographers. There is a fence along the walkway (added probably to keep people from throwing things off the bridge), but people have cut holes in the fence that leaves enough room for a camera or phone to poke through and get a shot. Here's the view from the bridge looking towards Lower Manhattan and the Brooklyn Bridge (and also, apparently, Pac-Man?).



And after heading across the river, you have this view as the bridge crosses over FDR Drive.



There were several spots along the walkway that provided interesting angles on the city, but there weren't any holes in the fence big enough for a camera. Luckily there were some gaps on the railings that were just big enough to awkwardly put the lens through.



But it wasn't the easiest place to take pictures. The subway tracks are right by the pedestrian walkway, and the trains passed by every few minutes. The rumbling trains made the bridge shake like an earthquake, which made any long exposure photographs turn out blurry. So a lot of my time on the bridge was spent waiting for trains to pass and for the bridge to stop moving. Here's the view looking down Broadway into Chinatown.



From there we walked through Chinatown into Little Italy, where we made our way to Lombardi's Pizza. It opened in 1905 and has been recognized as the very first pizzeria in the US. The pizza there was pretty good!