Central Park and BO

Having the strong desire for an adventure or possibly a change of scenery I decided to take the kids into Central Park.  This was Central Park during the week.  On a day when Scott was at work.  This was an adventure involving one adult and four children.  This was a day that was a hot, a humid, and almost unbearable day in the weather department.  I'm not sure it was an adventure or just really not smart.

We started our drive in Chatham and headed into Hoboken.  No, this was not a day for Carlo's Bake Shop.  This was a day for seeing Central Park.  You can't eat cake every time you pass through Hoboken.  We made it to 1 Hudson in Hoboken without anyone honking at us or without me accidentally cutting anyone off on the crazy freeway.  It was a bit on the Christmas Miracle side of things.

One Hudson is the location of the PATH.  It's the Port Authority between New Jersey and New York.  It's like the subway except different.  It looks like a subway and even smells like a subway but it's not.  It's the PATH.

We took the PATH to 33rd street.  This is as far as it takes you into Manhattan.  Which is fine but I needed to be somewhere around 65th street because we wanted to hit the Central Park Zoo.  Scott suggested I take a cab up to the park.  Really?  A cab when I have two good feet?  Not to mention the ten feet we had in total.  I asked the kids if they wanted to walk to Central Park.  They're smart kids.  They ask me, "How far is it?"  I don't really want to say how far because it's more than 30 blocks away.  At that moment we walked right by a Crumbs Bake Shop.  I suggest we get a cupcake!  This treat softened the 30 plus block conversation.  Everything was going to be fine.  A little sweaty.  But fine.

After the evidence of anything resembling a cupcake was gone we headed straight up, through Manhattan to the Central Park Zoo.  We walked through Times Square.  It was fairly busy and not quite as breathtaking as seeing all the lights at night but we were definitely feeling adventurous.

We took in the sites but we kept walking.  We walked until we started to see evidence that Central Park was close.

We headed into the park and surprisingly we found a hot dog stand selling water.  Water had never tasted so good.  We enjoyed the water on a bench surrounded by the NYPD.

If you've ever been in Central Park you know it's a place that can be confusing and you can easily get lost.  Get lost in the way that you know you're in a park but you have no idea where in the park you are or which way you need to head to your destination.  We found a map and made one more wrong turn but finally found some really cool animals. 

We had made it.  We were dripping with sweat but we had made it to the zoo! 

We loved seeing King Julian and the Penguins of Madagascar. 

Our adventure was not quite over.  I had been wanting to take the kids to Dylan's Candy Bar.  It's just a store that has any type of candy you could possibly want.  This seemed like the perfect moment to make them forget the 34 blocks they had walked and could possibly be walking again momentarily. 

 I would mask the torture by feeding them candy.

 It was supposed to be a simple walk-one block down and four short blocks over. 

Not so simple with BO in the city doing his taping on The View.  Not simple at all.  As we approach Park Avenue, the street we need to cross in order to get to the store, I notice that there aren't any cars going down it.  There are barely any people walking down it either.

 In fact, there are police barricades lining the whole street. 

I think to myself, "This can't possibly be good!  I have four sweaty and tired kids who I've imposed an adventure on.  Surely these nice police officers will see the desperation in my eyes and my need to cross this tiny street." 

Um, no.  They did not take pity on me.  One police officer even attempted to yell at me. 

We decide to just walk Park Avenue because I had a couple of blocks of wiggle room.  But, no, the whole street was blocked off.  I counted us lucky as I looked down every cross road and saw the piles and piles of cars wanting to escape the president's motorcade. 

We had no choice but to watch his entourage of 40 plus vehicles go down Park Avenue.  I will leave my feelings about the President of the United States wanting to be on The View or why he needed to have dinner with the editor of Vogue magazine that same night to myself.   What I can say it that everyone was very enthusiastic to cross the street after he passed by!

 

On with the adventure.  Dylan's was just two blocks away on 3rd Avenue.  Sweet! 

While one of the cuties sat on the floor, the other three kids scooped out the candy of their choice.  This was a great candy store.  A candy aisle at the grocery store will be such a disappoint now.  After taking in the cool air and the smell of all things sweet we headed out the door to beat traffic. 

Oh, wait. 

 The president was driving around the city with forty cars and streets blocked off. 

We had no chance of escaping without the zoo york affect. 

We took Scott's advice about taking a cab.  Outside the candy bar Jenna hailed her first cab.  Very cool.  We had a nice conversation with the cab driver who had no idea why the streets were so crowded.  He laughed out loud when I told him what the president was doing in New York.  

We headed out of the city the same way we had entered it.  After feeling like the day was a bit blurry and really sweaty we got into our car at 1 Hudson and blasted the air conditioning the whole way home.

This may be too much information for you to take in but this is what your feet look like when you have an adventure in Central Park wearing flip-flops. 

I'm just saying that we play for keeps.

Adventuresome feet!