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Today is the last day before our New York Passes expire, off we went to Central Bike Hire and hired a dude in a pedicab to bike us around Central Park. Rosie knows its lazy….she apologised numerous times about the weightload, The Operator was OK with it…. but he was still full of embarrassed bravado
and the ole ‘haha we will sub out at half time’. Emilio our Turkish chauffeur just laughed and said ‘you are so funny, I have had two fat people in here that took up all the seat and could hardly fit’…….made me feel a little better. There are dedicated cycle lanes in the city (for the brave and non faint hearted) so off we went and entered Central Park from 7th Avenue.
The day was calm with blue skies and an expected high of 23c, Emilio said we were his first customers of the day and needed to warm up so he was gonna take it slow and give us the full guided narrated experience….hhhmmmm….OK. Central Park roads are open to car traffic during the week in daylight hours only. On the weekend the roads belong to the cyclists, joggers, skaters, horse and carriages and heaps of pedicabs….Rosie didnt feel so silly when she saw a few more about.
The park doesn’t have its full autumn colour yet, just a few leaves falling yet it looked very pretty, Emilio said every season is beautiful in the park and every season makes it look so different.
The dog in the picture is Balto, the brave Siberian Husky stands nobly on his rock outcrop. This dogs claim to fame was running a flu vaccine over 1600 miles in 1925 to save a small township from a flu outbreak during a blizzard that closed the roads. Legend has it if you have a sick child, get them to rub the dogs back and they will be cured, hence the shiny back.
The Bethesda Fountain takes pride of place on the Terrace, the silver disc in the middle of the circle in the foreground marks the Centre Point of Manhattan – hence the name Central Park.
This is the underpass of Bethesda Terrace, behind the fountain, the main Central Park road runs along the top of it and leads to a gathering point full of buskers and strollers.
This area is off the main road, so even though there are paved trails that weave all around Central Park, no bikers are aloud on the side roads, they are for walkers only. You are only aloud to go one way around Central Park as well….Rosie never noticed this until Emilio pointed it out. I can understand it, with the amount of people using the area it makes it safe and orderly…it did kind of take the free and easy outdoor shine off the park though….rules, rules, rules. The park itself was built on swampy unused land at the northern fringe of the expanding city in 1856, the landscaping of the park was the first ever done in the US and was innovative in its naturalistic style with forested groves, meandering paths and informal ponds. All of the trees have been planted, the sometimes very large rock formations are all natural.
The fountain from ‘Friends’….you know Friends….come on you must have seen the re runs for the 500th thousand time….you know….
From the middle of this 843 acre park it seems like you are in the middle of nowhere, no cityscape can be seen at all. Then you get windows like this one that introduce the skyline back into your horizon and you realise how lucky New Yorkers are to have this open green space. This is a precious place to city dwellers, all of you 20 million park users per year….crazy eh.
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To the right is the Dakota building where John Lennon was gunned down on his doorstep while entering his apartment. Yoko still lives on the top floors. The side street where the front door is was chocka full of people laying flowers right on the front step….Rosie couldn’t really be bothered joining the mele to see ‘the dooorstep’….why would you buy a flat here where hundreds of crazy sight see-ers gather each day? The ‘Imagine’ mosaic above is across the road in a tiny alcove of the park….Rosie elbowed her way through the tourists, excuse me, excuse me….to get front and centre.
This was the crowd in the left picture, Rosie is getting sick and tired of waiting patiently for her photo op turn only to have some twat, normally European, to just push in….Rosie is taking a leaf out of their books and being abit (just abit) more aggressive….the busloads of Japs have no chance now, they are well down the pecking order!.jpg)
We exited Central Park and headed towards The Museum of Natural History, on the way there we stopped for a bite to eat, two hot dogs please with both ketchup and mustard, $2.00 bucks a piece. The buns are steamed and are nicely soft and warm without being mushy, the sausage was a frank type, a tasty snack all round and gotta be done.
Are all these big public buildings starting to look the same…….? This museum is famous for its 30,000,000 artifacts, yep, I didnt get the figure wrong, and its three dinosaur halls. Believe me when I say you could probably spend a month in here and still no see everything…..or, you could spend a night…..
Go on, you recognise this as well, A Night at The Museum movie with you know, that guy, this is the main hall in the movie….I think the T Rex was the centre piece though….he is shoved out the back now.
Here he is…like I said before TV makes everything seem bigger, in real life, the dinosaur skeletons are not as big as I thought they would be. Rosie still wouldnt want one to chase her down for dinner though…… 
The museum has a planetarium and meteors, an ocean creature skeleton wing, forest creatures, plants and rocks….so much, they even have a school lunch room for all the school groups that come here. It is so modern and well done, the signage with the dinosaurs is interesting and not long winded and dull, plus it is evolving with our knowledge of things too….the big plant eating dinosaurs bones used to stand more upright with the tail on the ground….modern research shows they stood flatter and more horizontal so the bones have been re aligned. Was really interesting!
This ancient sea turtle is the weirdest thing I have ever seen…surely it cannot be real, it is someones idea of a joke…look at its comical face and feet…..crazy!
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Above is the Guggenheim Art Museum over the other side of Central Park, it is a work of art sculpturally in itself and has a meandering spiral ramp instead of stairs. It houses modern art from Picasso, Kandinsky and Pollock, was nice seeing these 20th century paintings in all their bright colours instead of just on the pages of art history books.
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Rosie was getting a little tired but there was one more stop in this area of town, The Rockefeller Centre. This tall building was also built during the Depression era 1930s and gave jobs to 70,000 workers over nine years. It was the first project to combine retail, office space and entertainment in one building and is often described ‘as a city within a city’.
Looking down from this terrace in the plaza is where the famous ice skating rink is in winter and where the giant, famous Rockefeller Xmas tree is….you have all seen that on TV before too….right? It would be magic being here in winter.
This is another wee alleyway with a fountain in the plaza, it is beautiful and has heaps of high end shopping….but that’s not why Rosie and The Operator were here, we were going up to The Top of The Rock to check out the view!
Trying to find an entrance way into this place to access the Top of The Rock was a nightmare! A few well placed signs would not have gone amiss, this whole building is like a rabbit warren and you can wander around for ages…..everyone was asking everyone else where to go….essentially it was tourists asking tourists and none of us had any idea. We werent as bad as one Aussie lot, they said they had been wandering round for about half an hour….in the wrong building! The Operator hasnt put a foot wrong yet in the navigation stakes!
We were up on the Observation deck at about 4.00pm….Rosie and The Operator were kind of aiming for sunset….but we were too darned early….my photos look hazy, but it was just abit too bright at that time of the day. It was great being able to look back at The Empire State and then turn around and look over Central Park. The Rock was a lot less hectic when it came to the amounts of people there and the mission getting through security etc. Rosie thought the views were better from The Rock – The Operator thought The Empire State won. Its a draw and Rosie and The Operator would recommend visiting both!
