USA Holiday, November 05 (If I Can Make It Here)

Started out in Central Park, which is kind of big. You could spend most of a day walking around if you really wanted. They've also got a small zoo, which I didn't expect to be as good as the Bronx one, but it was free with the Pass, so why not.

A few of the animals had gone into hiding again here, but there was a few things to see. Then went back to wandering around the park for a bit. Some kids carousel near the Strawberry Fields was playing Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da which was a fun coincidence, or maybe intentional, I don't know. There's a huge field for ball games and stuff near the middle, which would be great if you lived nearby, and pretty much you can make your own running circuit however you want, because there's so many twists and turns to the paths - kind of confusing actually.

Kind of large ice skating rink.

Some kind of monkey.

This bird enclosure was insanely hot and humid. There's even steam coming out of the roof !

 

This is actually a Red Panda, pretty neat.

Stupid polar bear just sat in the cave, didn't do any tricks.

I think it's compulsory for every zoo to have seal feeding.

More walking.

I thought there'd be fields, and strawberry coloured stuff, but not much of either.

There were two fountains, can't remember if this was the good one or the crappy one.
I'll say the good one.

Didn't bother going all the way up the top of the park to the reservoir, just too much walking. Spent a couple of hours in the afternoon doing some shopping, in particular visiting the list of sports cards stores I had on my list. I had about five in total, of which two didn't seem to exist anymore, two didn't have much for sale and one was pretty good, but had more baseball and comics than it had basketball or football. Kind of surprising that even in NYC I struggled to find any good sports cards store.

New York also has a Union Square.

Went on a boat / ferry thing called Circle Cruise which leaves from the west side of Manhattan. The cruise has a guy narrating the trip so you actually know what you're looking at, the only problem is you do a loop so he ends up repeating a bunch of stuff as you come past places for a second time on the way back. The cruise heads south so you get to see the shoreline of southwest Manhattan with the financial district and all of the redeveloped piers, plus Hoboken and Jersey City (both NJ) on the opposite site. Then of course we got a closeup of the Statue Of Liberty which was cool, before heading up over the other side of Manhattan to see Brookyln, Long Island City and Queens on one side, and the east side of Manhattan on the other. The tour was good and it was just starting to get dark during the ride too, so you also get some nice views at night.

I'm On A Boat.

Some buildings.

Ellis Island.

Brooklyn Bridge.

Manhattan Bridge.

Williamsburg Bridge.

Disregard the signs, this is Long Island City, not Long Island.

United Nations building.

Chrysler building - the pointy one with all the lights.

Empire State Building - the one with the blue lights.

For dinner I had BIG PIZZA. I even managed to eat three slices.

Not that crappy thin crust, thin base stuff you usually see.

In the evening we saw Ricky Gervais at Carnegie Hall. He was only on stage for about an hour (at best), and the material wasn't even that good. A little disappointing really. Ushers were coming around and talking to people that were taking photos, even before anyone had come on stage.