In this blog I just want to show you a jumble of New York photos that didn’t make it into other blogs. I’ll add comments, so hopefully they won’t seem too confusing.
First, my favourite place in New York – Central Park!
We took so many great photos in Central park that It would have been lovely to do a whole blog solely on Central Park.
It was awesome to see the colours change from green to orange.
Discovering how many different shades and shapes the leafy carpet could be.
I think the very first time we went walking in Central Park, we found this little pond. Whoever has watched “Stuart Little” should know that they have little remote-controlled sailing boats for hire, so you can spend a weekend afternoon sailing a little boat around on the pond.
You could, of course, bring your own. This one may not have been a sailing boat, but it was by far the most interesting!
Somewhere at the beginning of our New York stay, we visited the Bronx Zoo. I just like these two photos.
We bought Explorer Passes to cover a lot of our sightseeing. Each pass allowed us to choose 10 attractions out of a given list. I can’t remember how many options there were, but it was pretty extensive, covering all the basic stuff, like the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty.
I really liked the pass, because when you decide to use it, you just arrive where you want to be, then use the pass as a voucher to redeem your ticket.
The Explorer pass we bought allowed us a whole month in which to visit all ten the attractions, so we weren’t rushed.
We started using the passes by going on two bus tours. (For the first and probably the last time ever.) One downtown and one uptown. It was nicer on the second day, because the second day we had cloudy weather.
The first day
The MOMA didn’t even charge us entry for everyone. I can’t remember if children go in free or what exactly, but we only used two passes to get into the MoMA.
After we had visited the Rockefeller Centre, we had used our passes only three and a half-(ish) times and we still had most of our month in which to use the rest.
So we chose to do some cool free stuff first, like going to the New York public library. (That is totally my second most favourite place in New York!)
We ended up visiting the library twice, since the first time we went, the big reading room was closed for renovations.
The Library isn’t like a normal library, where you check out books and take them home to read. (That’s why it seems really empty.) The New York public library has TONNES of books, but you can’t take them out of the library. It’s really awesome – all you need is an ID, then you can sit for free and enjoy the books. They are brought up to the reading room from the ‘under-Bryant-Park’ storage by a robotic train system. There are actually people who have self-educated themselves by using the library!
On our first visit to the library, we got a free tour of the building, (minus the Rose Reading room). In one of the rooms there is a children’s library, that operates in normal Library terms.
There are two big stone lions outside the Library itself, so they made two Lego replicas in here.
Look who we found inside!
These are the original stuffed toys that inspired the Winnie-the-Pooh stories.
Visiting the New York Public library for the second time was one of the very last things we did in New York before we left for Norfolk. The reading room, which had been closed for two years actually reopened during the time we were in New York!
My Dad had the brilliant idea to take some work and to actually go and sit inside the library for a while. It was awesome!
I didn’t have my ID there, unfortunately. Otherwise I could have used their robotic train system to summon a book from the depths of their underground storage facility.
I really like the library, but I have other photos I want to share.
So, back to what I was saying. We visited the Natural History museum, which was not on our explorer pass list.
We never did see any moose in Canada, so we ended up seeing them here. 😉
After that we realised that our month was ticking by and we still had a lot of passes we needed to use!
We reviewed our list and made a trip to the Intrepid, Sea, Air and Space museum. (I’m not sure if the aircraft carrier the museum is housed in was actually called the Intrepid. Whether it was or not, we referred to it that way.)
The Blackbird spy-plane was one of the main attractions standing on the deck of the Intrepid.
That was a cool museum.
I learnt a lot about aircraft carriers that day – mostly that they are really huge!
We have a similar cleat on our boat . . . but against this one we felt like the borrowers. ^_^
Then we visited the 9/11 memorial. Unfortunately, it didn’t help us use up our tickets. 😉
It was a really sobering experience.
The World Trade Centre was attacked by terrorists on the 11th of September, 2001. Planes were hijacked and flown into the Twin Towers.
The whole disaster is recorded fully at the memorial, with tonnes of voice recordings of people who experienced it first-hand.
It was really sad. I think in future I will be better able to sympathise with the whole ‘terrorist-phobia’ associated with America.
Two huge square waterfalls now stand where the twin towers used to stand.
This is the artwork that used to stand at the base of the twin towers, in a courtyard between them. It took quite a battering when the towers fell. It now stands in Battery park. (No pun intended.)
This is the new World Trade centre. It looms over the memorial of the old one, all shiny glass and metal.
That’s it for Part I. There will be more soon . . .
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