Kook Central: New York- First Weekend

Ok ok, settle down people. I know Mindy promised you a daily blog and well, she seems to be MIA (somewhere in France I suspect). I also know that some of you out there haven't been able to contain yourself these past weeks waiting to hear about my trip to New York (I can't figure out how to upload pictures to Facebook without it crashing. Hmmm). So you are in luck!

First day in town I decided to explore central park for a bit. Gosh it is lovely! That really struck me about NY, all the lovely public spaces but when you consider that they all live in small apartments it makes sense that they have so many parks. My apartment was luckily close to the park and I spent a lot of time there over the next six weeks, running around the Jackie Onassis reservoir most mornings before work.

I was lucky enough to arrive early morning July 4th which meant two things: 1) long weekend and 2) fireworks! I went down to the East River to check them out. I was quite nervous about it since it was my first day there and I was on my own and there were LOADS of people but it was great! The fireworks themselves were cool but the most impressive thing was how long they lasted for! They had cute smiley face ones too :)

My second day I did the big one, the Cloisters and the Met. Gosh, the Cloisters was brilliant, it definitely makes it to my top 3 things in NY list. It is a small part of the Met up the top of Manhattan at the end of a beautiful garden overlooking the hudson. It is completely dedicated to Medieval Art and is housed in a reconstructed Abbey. And the whole place is so quiet, really atmospheric. I loved it! The Met was good too, I was there for ages, but it was a little crowded for me, and I kept getting lost (6 hours people!)

Then on Sunday I took the train up to the Bronx (with Police officers in every carriage!) and went to the Bronx zoo. That was pretty cool except I spent most of the time thinking how much Tom would have liked it. The gorillas were the best- such amazing human characteristics. They also had a cool butterfly garden (which was only a little frightening) and one of those skyride things. I also saw my first chipmunk ever (but not actually in the zoo ;-) )