Ode to the park... and to cupcakes...

We set off on a walk yesterday. It turned out to be a 3 hour walk - it's easy to do that in the city. I had suggested poking around in Central Park yesterday because the weather was *awesome*. It was in the 50's, sunny, no breeze - just a perfect day.

We decided to walk to Central Park as it's only about 20 blocks to the beginning of the park from our house, but we made a mistake, and decided to make the walk by heading up through Upper West Side. And LALALALALALALALALALA - MAGNOLIA BAKERY! Before we could even hit the park, we ran into the UWS branch of the best cupcake store in the city (this can be debated - as there are people who don't think this is the best cupcake store in the city, but screw them - this is my blog). I was walking a few steps behind Blondie and as we started to pass, I was like "HEY! BLONDIE!" and convinced him to go in for cupcakes! So yum! And it was the perfect snack to keep us going.



After the cupcakes, we headed down 72nd St to Central Park West to the Dakota. I've never been a huge Beatles fan, but still felt this was something I needed to see. The Dakota was where John Lennon was shot. It was a crazy looking building, very unique. We then crossed CPW and went into Central Park to see the John Lennon memorial.

The Dakota

John Lennon Memorial

Once in the park, we headed on up to see several key points - we saw the lake, the reservoir (they are different), and the Great Lawn. It was pretty cool to see snow still on the ground in some places, and be sweating our asses off in the sun at the same time. The reservoir was my favorite part - this is basically the locale you see in any movie about NY where they show people running. I wanted to walk the reservoir but we were both pretty worn out at this point (we had gone about 50 blocks + a couple of avenues), so we just hung out beside it people watching for awhile.

Great Lawn

Reservoir

SO MUCH SNOW!

The lake

I loved GGP in SF - it was one of my favorite spots. But Central Park seems so much better than GGP. This is a good thing. I didn't feel like I was going to step on needles. I didn't feel like I was going to get run over by cars (they stop car traffic in the park!). I didn't feel like I was pissing runners off by walking (they have separate biking/rollerblading/running/jogging trails). The street noise was GONE. It was so quiet in the park it was amazing. I guess it comes down to I'm a city person that has to be able to dip out of the city when I need to. GO CENTRAL PARK!

After our walk, we took the subway back down our hood. The subway stop we got on at was the one of the Museum of Natural History and the station was decorated with fossil casts all over. It was pretty cool.


We stopped for big salads on the way home, and then collapsed last night. A great day in NYC!

--K