Biking in the Park

15 Sep 2014--So all good things must come to an end, and on Friday we took our last trip into the city to go bike riding in Central Park.  As soon as we came up from the subway we were practically assaulted by vendors trying to get us to rent their bikes, ride their horses, etc...but that worked out well...we rented the bikes for a song!  haha

At the southern entrance to the park are these statues to Christopher Columbus, the bear is a tourist (haha), and the biggest one is a tribute to the Battleship Maine, the sinking of which led to the Spanish American War.



There are lots of roads in the park, but only the outer loop allows the horses, cars in some places, and bike riding.  We did the entire loop which is about 7 miles round-trip.  I forget how many acres it is, but we entered at 59th street and didn't make the turn till we hit 110th, so it is huge!

A quick fun fact:  It can cost over $289,000 for a one-year hot dog stand permit in Central Park!!!



This reservoir is named after Jackie Onassis.

  

Before we made the turn at 110th Street, we left the park for a little while to go over a few blocks to a church we had read about called the Cathedral Church of St John the Divine.  It is an Episcopal church built in 1892 and is the largest Gothic church in the world!!!

 

On the side of the church is what they call the "Children's Sculpture Garden".  The 3rd pic here shows a devil's head hanging from a lobster claw, so I figured they were looking to scare the children, no?!  haha

The inside of the church stretches a full 601 feet from back to front, with the back half seemingly used to display works of art or whatever else they choose, I guess.  On display as we visited were 2 Phoenix sculptures, 100 ft long apiece, raised head to tail, in a line.  I couldn't really even get a good picture to show how massive this place is, so I basically took what I could in 2 halves...here's the front of the church followed by the back half.


 

At the front of the church but behind the chairs and the area where the priest would say mass are at least 6 separate chapels dedicated to different saints.



Here is one of the chapels.




And here is another.



Along the sides of the church were a couple crypts.  This place was really beautiful, but I couldn't really convey that in the pictures due to its size.  We were mostly happy that it was opened, seeing as so many other places had been closed.  haha



Between everything going on in the park and visiting the church, it took us most of the day before we returned our bikes, got a sub, and had a little mini-picnic to wrap up it up.

   


So to close out our visit we decided to stay out till it got dark and hit Times Square at night.  Even though I wasn't 100% due to my shin splints (haha), we walked from 59th to 42nd Street to see the sights again.

Look at the crowds we're walking thru and with just trying to get there!

And the last of my fun facts:  It costs $1 million to get a license to operate a taxi; NYC has more people than 39 of our 50 states; and UPS, FedEx, and other commercial delivery companies get up to 7000 parking tickets A DAY, paying up to $120 million in fines to the city!!!



In the 1st pic of the 2nd row here, where we are having our picture taken with the Statue of Liberty, that lady just jumped in our picture and started talking to us and the Statue.  She was pretty funny!

 
 

Some of the characters along the way.  The kid with the backpack in the 1st pic was telling the protester, (Yeah, but just because TV is brainwashing us doesn't mean that Superman isn't real!...haha)  The almost naked women were truly almost naked...other than paint and panties, they had nothing on, so we don't know how they weren't arrested.  haha

And walking (again) from 42nd Street to 34th Street where we caught the train back to New Jersey, we went thru the Garment District.



So NYC has been better than I could have hoped.  We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and couldn't have had a better time!!!  That's a wrap!!!