Picnic in the Park

First into the carriage

Our cunning plan to minimise walking was thwarted early on when the subway train we were on didn't stop at the station we wanted to get off at. Once up on the street, we then set off in the wrong direction for a block or two. We have still not adjusted to the fact that if you face the sun, east is on your left, not west.

We stopped at a shopping mall at Columbus Circle by the SE corner of the Park to recover from the heat and buy a picnic lunch. After looking around the shops in the pleasant coolness, we set off into the Park, avoiding the touts offering bicycles, horse and cart rides etc. We found ourselves a pleasant shady spot in the park for our lunch. We weren't the only ones with the same idea.

Later on we set off towards the centre of the park, stopping to watch three African American guys put on a show involving lots of banter and leaping about, with a finale that involved doing a somersaut over four unlucky "volunteers" from the crowd.

We nearly expired from the heat as we walked around the lake and then to the Museum of Natural History, beside the park. We'd decided to look around the Rose Centre for Earth and Space at the museum. In the end that was quite disappointing. Its main focus was a planetarium, which we didn't visit. A few large meteorites and a Mars rover were on display, but not much else. We did enjoy the native fauna exhibition in another part of the museum, with huge grizzly bears displayed in impressive diarama, along with a variety of smaller animals.

Alaskan Brown Bears are huge!

Returned home to the hotel via the subway, with a small amount of trudging along the hot streets at the end.