Vacation #8: Walking in NYC---Central Park

Sorry about the delay in posting.  Our internet was out for several days and I have been watching Luke and Aaron while Laura begins a new job, and I'm obsessively knitting a sweater for Luke in any spare minutes.

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In the months leading up to our big trip we had thought quite a bit about what we wanted to squeeze into the three days in New York.  Now we were looking at weather to see how to organize our time.  Wednesday looked like a beautiful day, while there was rain in the forecast for Thursday.  We decided to try to get in most of the outdoor, walking activities on Wednesday.

Our breakfast was mostly some foods we had brought with us, along with orange juice from the corner market.  We did not get an early start.  This is vacation, after all, and we had stayed up late watching movies.

We needed to plot out our subway routes.

Our map and 7-day passes went with us everywhere.

First on the list was Central Park.  But before that was a trip to a nearby shoe store.  Becca was in the market for some Tom's shoes, had done her homework and found a store within a few blocks of our hotel that sold them.

Central Park is 2.5 miles by .5 miles, so even though we walked around in Central Park for 4-5 hours, we did not see everything.  It was great, though.

One thing we did not understand about Central park is that it is surrounded by a big stone fence and has limited entrances.  We came out of the subway, walked a few blocks to the park and came to an unbroken wall.  Apparently we turned the wrong direction, because we walked quite a distance before we found a gate and entered the park.

It was fascinating right from the start.  We crossed a wide, street size paved bike/roller blade/running path, then crossed a strip of grass and then a street size cinder walking/running path.  There were many people using these paths.  There were bike tour groups, people with dogs, numerous nannies.  How did we know they were nannies?  Because of nationality differences and obvious dissimilarity to the children in their care.

We saw the reservoir first, which also had a running path around it.  We also saw the sheep meadow where we could have returned to watch a movie in the park after dark.  There was an Egyptian obelisk, given to Central Park, with hieroglyphics on all four sides.

It was a big obelisk.

We had our lunch near the turtle pond where we also enjoyed watching a heron fishing.

At the turtle pond

texting at the turtle pond

pointing out the heron

the heron

There was a family at the turtle pond with a very active son who dropped his camera more than once.  They were patient, though, and no one got upset, even when it fell into the water.

Central Park is a location for many scenes from movies, and one of the most popular locations is the bow bridge.

Bow Bridge, with a wedding group and a photographer surrounded by other visitors to the park.

Chuck and I at Bow Bridge

Tim at Bow Bridge

We went through Belvedere Castle.

the view of Turtle Pond from Belvedere Castle

We saw the great lawn, the tennis courts, the baseball diamonds, and the lake with its many rowboats.  We treated ourselves to Ben and Jerry's ice cream bars from a vendor.  

A highlight was Strawberry Fields, an area dedicated to the memory of John Lennon.  Near the 'Imagine' mosaic was an old hippie who took it upon himself to tell everyone how to behave at the memorial.  Chief among his instructions was that if you are getting your picture taken with the mosaic, you are required to make the peace sign.

He harassed quite a few people who were getting their pictures taken.  Sometimes they acquiesced and held up the required peace sign.  Sometimes they held it up until he walked away and then quit.  Some ignored him completely.

 

We also walked through the mall before leaving Central Park.

 That's more than enough for tonight.  You need to know that more than half of the pics in this post were taken by Becca and borrowed/stolen from her facebook photo album (with permission).  Thanks, Bec!