Today we decided to buck the trend of the previous few days and head north. Along the eastern side of Central Park is an art gallery known as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
The building itself is quite impressive. It’s entranceway is low and the revolving door serves to slow down the people coming into the museum. Once inside the space opens up before you revealing the spiral walkway, winding around the building. Sadly the skylight was closed so the room was quit a bit darker than it should have been. The museum also prohibited photography on any level other than the ground floor.
We had some cheap eats outside at the nearest food vendor and headed onwards to explore Central Park.
Central park is big, really big. To put it’s size in some form of perspective it is the equivalent land area to 150 New York city blocks.
Inside the park about halfway down, starting about where the Guggenheim Museum is, is the old water reservoir. A large lake-like body of water which used to be used to supply water to New York City. Now it’s just a lake with a walking path around it’s circumference and some pretty views of the city.
We headed south, heading through the park itself. The park is divided into lots of sections divided by walking paths and roads. There is the constant flux of people moving through the park, and even more congregating at the various points of interest. There are people walking dogs, on the grass people are relaxing, playing ball games and even sun baking.
Continuing south, we headed out of the Park and along Madison Avenue which runs parallel to the park. We continue to walk past lots of shops, and a few Cafe’s stopping once to have afternoon tea and a drink. We end up walking so far that we find ourselves at another New York landmark - Grand Central Terminal.
The main entrance quickly makes way into this giant room, the main concourse, swarming with people going in every direction.
Located behind the Grand Central Terminal is another famous landmark, the Chrysler Building. Both of these buildings were declared awesome by Michael Bay and were thus destroyed in the New York sequence in Armageddon.
Continuing on, we find ourselves at a small outpost of hope for any expat Australian living in New York.
Hours of walking can make you tired, not to mention thirsty. Not much further and we end resting in the park outside the New York Public Library. With chairs, a shop for food and drinks, and free wifi you could easily spend hours there relaxing. The park has a great view of the surrounding city, especially the Empire State Building clearly visible in this next photo from the spot we had staked ourselves.
This pretty much marked the end of the exploration phase of the day. After this we relaxed for a while, taking in the sights, and then headed off in search of dinner. We ended up back on the same street as we were on last night, but this time we went to a pub/restaurant which served decent beer and food.
And that capped off the day.
I have another couple of observations I’d like to share about New York. While walking around I couldn’t help but notice the sheer amount of scaffolding there seems to be setup around the city. It can often seem as though you spend quit a lot of time walking underneath it. It is so common, in fact, that often you forget it is there until you are already half-way through it.
Another, though much lesser in scope, is these snack food world shops that are present around Times Square. I’m not sure how many ‘world’ shops there are but we did find an M&M’s world and a Pop Tarts World.