Today was a beautiful day for walking and exploring so we set off to cover as much of Central Park as we could. Once again, it was about lunchtime, so we found a great restaurant just opposite the park. It was much fancier than we had experienced in NY so far and they were Italian, so I was pleased! George took photos of the food but he is not up to send them to me. So he had lobster ravioli and I had the porchini risotto. Both were good, but I preferred the food from last night, it was cheaper too. Still good food today though.

With full bellies we set off to start out at the Central Park Zoo on the lower east side of the park. The movie Madagascar has a lot to answer for, the zoo itself is quite small although it is well maintained. But yeh no lions, sassy hippos, giraffes or wise cracking zebras to be found. There were alot of penguins though!

After the zoo, we made our way back to the park and found a map. This was to prove most useful even if George didn’t realise it was only the map for one third of the park 😜

It was so nice to be around so much green after walking through the city for a few days. Many photos were taken, a few are below

Ok, whilst we were taking a sitting break and enjoying the view of the lake with all the row boats, there was this one girl in a bikini trying to row a boat with her beefcake boyfriend just sitting there. It was so hilarious. She was rowing the boat backwards and could not coordinate the oars and kept going into the side of the lake. I should have filmed it, but I couldn’t stop laughing. Her boyfriend just sat there the whole time.

This is the fountain from the Friends opening credits.

Besides squirrels; ducks, fish and turtles are pretty much the wildlife. You can see all 3 above.

Whilst exploring, we encountered a performing troupe called the Afrobats. They had gathered quite a crowd so we joined in to watch. It was a funny and entertaining show. Their jumping and dancing ability caused George to say

pretty much after every trick.

We kept on walking till we had seen every area we could on the map. It was about 7ish then and our feet were getting tired and our bellies were rumbling again so we headed off home to rest a little before we headed out to eat. We did manage to find a place selling 3 punnets of raspberries for $2. So we bought more berries to snack on.

Conveniently, the street we are staying in Chinatown is home to one of New York’s great cheap eats called Prosperity Dumplings. Check out our dinner below

That is 12 fried pork dumplings, dumpling noodle soup and a peking duck sesame pancake. All of it cost $9.50. Holy crap was it good too.

All up a great day! We chalked up 16,932 steps too. Tomorrow there shall be more walking as we head to Times Square and it’s surrounds.