We woke up grumpy, but after finding a "Starbucks" and a coffee/tea/bagel we were happy again. So off we walked to Central Park about a 15 min away. As we entered the park we were approached by many Africans ( I recognized them for Venice and Paris! ) selling either fake Prada bags/ sunglasses or trying to get us to hire a bike/ horse drawn carriage/ rickshaw. So we decided to walk the park , not realising it's enormous and takes up 843 acres of land. However, it was a great experience and we enjoyed the stroll, the lakes, turtles, strawberry fields,and Belvedere castle. The signage isn't great around the paths, but with a trustworthy map in your hand you can't stray to far away. I suppose we did about a third of the park in a couple of hours.
Our next stop was the Metropoliatan museum of Art. We were fairly
hot and tired at this stage and not particularly culturally inspired, so we headed for the cafe sign. While enjoying our lunch in the cool surrounds I noticed everyone but us were wearing red stickers on their clothes,they had obviously paid entrance fees. Mmmmm we suddenly realized we had bypassed the entrance and got in for free- illegally via the gift store. Well the enjoyment of lunch was overcome by guilt, so we sheepishly left ( after eating our lunch of course!) enjoying the beauty of the museum on the way out .
The next highlight of the day was walking down 5 th avenue. The footpath ran parallel to the park and had plenty of shade and benches for rest. The apartment buildings were amazing, the architecture and kerbside canopy leading to the front doors were all very swish. We hit the wall about now, our feet were tired and people watching on the benches became a relaxing passtime.
Further down 5 th avenue the scenery starts to change, the traffic becomes heavier, the taxis are bumper to bumper, horns start hooting and crowds appear on the streets. The shops of the wealthy now adorn either side of the avenue, Prada, Tiffany, Gucci Louis Voitton and other names I am not familiar with. The "apple store" is amazing,and the toy stores are incredible.
Our next adventure was to be the Museum of Modern Art- which we intended to pay for this time . However, we were stopped in our tracks by a frenzy of movie makers in the middle of 5th ave shooting scenes for a new Ben Stiller movie . Then just before our eyes Ben skate boards past us, Greg was so excited that he decided to chose Ben over the MOMA. It was all happening movies and fashion shoots so NYCity.
We then headed for the Rockfeller Centre to climb to "the top of the rock", actually take the lift up to the top!($25 each) It was an awesome sight looking across to the Hudson river, empire state building and views across central park. I enjoyed it, Greg not so keen.
Next was a walk to Grand Central Station- and yes it's grand just like in the movies. It's spotless, it has chandeliers and trains ! It also has another Mac store on the mezzanine level, where we sat to reconstruct our lost blogs.
With legs weary we headed home bound past the amazing Byrant park and settled for Turkish for tea.
We start our tour tomorrow. We have discovered a new found admiration for those who plan every day of their holidays, who motivate themselves daily to get up and find a new adventure. We are looking forward to being organized by someone else for a few days on tour.
Cheers Leanne and Greg
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Location:Day 3
