Day 22 | Central Park
Today we took a trip over to Central Park and see where that lead us. There was all sorts of maintenance on the PATH and even though it was a Sunday it was packed, and at one stage even stopped. Eventually made it over to Manhattan and up to Central Park. By this time we’re actually needing a bit of a snack and bravely had a few hot dogs before going into the park. Jemmz and McKay went off to Peacefood café nearby. The dumplings were amazing. Then they rejoined the others at Grand Central Terminal after walking through an uptown area.
In the park there is a bit of ice about on the footpaths but there are compensatory squirrels about. What an amazing asset to have in the middle of a city like this. It is really huge and people certainly make a lot of use of it even in the winter. There was plenty of joggers even with the cold and a lot of dogs. Rosie got to pat a huge soft Bernese Mountain Dog who enjoyed it while her owner mentioned there was a huge owl in the park to look out for which is unusual apparently.
We visited a couple of sites including the Shakespeare Garden, Belvedere Castle, the Bow Bridge and finished up passing through the Strawberry Fields dedicated to John Lennon. He and Yoko lived in the adjacent Dakota Building (that was back in 1980). All very solemn. From here we subway-ed down to Grand Central.
We caught up with Jemmz and McKay – seems a miracle in this bustling place, and enjoyed Shake Shack in the food court area. Grand Central is for the intercity trains and a couple of links to the subway but is memorable for its awesome architecture as well as being the second busiest station in the US (after the more modern Penn Station up the road).
From here we visited the M&M store in Times Square for a couple of things. On the way we saw the amazing Christmas decorations and even saw one of the tiny police cars pull over a truck and have words. There are a lot of intersections that are monitored by cops either actively directing traffic and crossings or standing by. At one intersection a cop car was announcing over the loudspeaker in a broad NY accent to the car in front “no toining, this ain’t no toining lane ” siren blast “no toining, this ain’t no toining lane”. Funny.
Stopping afterwards for a slice of NY pizza in a packed tiny store – which was both an experience and delicious. We also looked in at the Adidas store on 5th Ave. It had a neat frontage that gave it the feel of entering a stadium and on the inside had bleachers above. Packing on the subway again we’re off to downtown to visit the Wallstreet Bull (Fearless Girl has been moved but there are footprints for you to be fearless girl). Then back home.
Highlights:
Angus | Seeing all these familiar sights in the Park
Rosie | Seeing central Park and patting the doggies
O’Regan |NY Hotdogs and being told he sounded like a true New Yorker
Jemmz |The excellent Peacefoods dumplings
McKay | Walking through uptown – very fancy
