Playing in the Park! Central that is...

We did a whole lotta walking in Central Park on our trip to New York.  It is my favourite part of New York City.  I have been three times, and haven't seen anything that has beat it yet.  And the best part is, it's free!  Warning: This is a very picture heavy post. 

So Day 2 (Sunday) we woke up and got right to it.  We ate breakfast at a little place on our way to the Subway and then took the Subway up to the end of the park at 5th Avenue.  Last time I was there I did a movie tour of the park, which I highly recommend.  They showed us all of the important parts of the park and then tied different areas into movies.  We didn't do it this time because I had already done it and knew my way around the park somewhat and Ryan isn't really a movie buff.  Plus they mostly point out chick flick locations, so he would have gotten nothing out of that. 

So we wandered the park kind of zig zagging across it to see all the important areas. 

Despite what these pictures look like, the park was actually pretty full.  I guess they have an off leash rule down at the south end, because dogs were everywhere just running around, playing with each other.  There was also some marathon for the park going on, so it was crazy busy in some areas and there were tons of runners. 

This is Strawberry Fields with the John Lennon memorial.  This is also basically across the street from where he was shot. 

 Bethesda Terrace followed by Bethesda Fountain

The Boathouse across the lake.  I don't know whether we were just too early or if the boats weren't out yet for the season, but there were none out on the lake.

These stairs were going up to Belvedere Castle.  They appeared after walking through The Ramble, which is kind of a hilly, wild area of the park.  Very beautiful, not somewhere I would want to be at night.

 The view from Belvedere Castle.  That's the Great Lawn in the distance there.

Belvedere Castle.  You may recognize it from Stepmom, when Julia Roberts loses the little boy.

This was basically our final stop.  This is about halfway up the park.  Then we walked over to the west side where the American Museum of Natural History is.  

On our last day, we did another park walk.  Ryan wanted to be able to say we had walked the whole thing.  So we took the subway up to the very north end and walked down all the way to the other end of the park.

 Who knew you could find a waterfalls in Central Park!

The Reservoir, which is surrounded by a running track.  Ryan thinks running looks stupid.  I tend to agree.  If I was able to run through Central Park every day though I might be more inclined to take it up.

The Swedish Cottage - apparently actually built in Sweden and shipped to New York.  There are so many random things in this park that I didn't understand what purpose they served.  But it's kind of neat.

Those are our travels through the park. Central park goes from 59th Street up until 110th street.  So 51 blocks up and 3 big blocks wide (which are about 3 regular blocks).  20 regular blocks is equal to a mile.  So on the last day alone we walked at least 2 and a half miles down the park, plus we ended up in the far diagonal corner.  That's a bunch of walking!  Especially on our fourth day of walking around the city. I guess our legs were used to it by then.  But we can say we saw pretty much everything, so it was totally worth it!