Alice under repair

According to NY1 (my new favourite TV station) the weather today was set to top the 90 degree mark with the chance of thunder storms and extreme humidity. While there was no thunderstorms that I could see, the temperature was horrific and the humidity was so high, fish were walking along the sidewalks breathing the air.

I woke early and, after my usual breakfast at Roxy’s Diner (famous since 1944 with the motto ‘Take your time hurry up’) hopped on the C train heading uptown to 81st Street. The hotel we’re at is so handy for virtually all the subway trains. It has the added benefit of not being in Midtown.

Unlike the Tube, the subway trains are deliciously air conditioned – it’s like sitting in a fridge. I reckon anyone without air conditioning should just ride on the subway all day. Of course the comfort levels are drastically reduced once you leave, as I did, into the heat of 81st Street.

The New York Museum of Natural History doesn’t open until 10am and I arrived at 9 in order to wander around a bit of Central Park. Actually that sounds a bit random. I’d found out there’s a statue of Alice in Wonderland in the park and was determined to find it.

Central Park is so amazing. Rolling hills, lakes, woodland, open grass. A true oasis in the heart of Manhattan. And there’s always lots of people enjoying it. Joggers, mothers with babies, school groups playing football and learning to dribble…actually I sat on a bench for a bit and watched this guy painstakingly explaining to a group of toddlers how to dribble a ball into the net.

He started at one end with a small football at his feet, telling them to take little steps and just tap the ball in front of them, approaching the small goalposts. He demonstrated as he spoke, taking tiny steps until he stood about a foot from the goal and then, with the instruction to score, booted it into the back of the net. He then turned around and told the first little girl to have a go.

She looked a lot like Shirley Temple, all curls and cute little dress. Her foot was resting professionally on the ball, her face a study in concentration. She lifted her foot and kicked the ball straight at the goal, scoring effortlessly. The guy smiled grimly and told her, while it was a great goal, she hadn’t quite grasped dribbling.

She was about four and she looked at the guy as if to say there was no way she was slowly walking towards the goal in the heat when she could just as easily kick it from where she stood.

Anyway, eventually I found the Alice statue but, to my massive disappointment, it was undergoing some sort of surgical procedure by park staff and had been roped off. This is as close as I could get. Thank goodness I had my new camera!

Alice in Central Park

You can see the White Rabbit, Alice (who looks rather demonic), the Cheshire Cat behind her, the Doormouse on her lap and the Mad Hatter to the right. Such a pity I couldn’t get closer! Clearly I will have to visit New York again.

The heat of the day was rapidly growing as I wandered back across the park to the Natural History Museum. I gladly entered its air conditioned arms, paid my entrance fee and wandered up to the dinosaurs.

Up on the 4th floor there is the largest collection of dinosaur fossils in the world and I wandered around, eyes wide, taking in the wonders. Here’s just a couple of them.

Dinosaurs at the New York Museum of Natural History

And, of course, I had to go and look at the rocks. The museum has the largest piece of meteorite in any museum in the world. It’s called (yes, it actually has a name) Ahnighito and is just a bit of an original one that fell to earth thousands of years ago in Greenland. It’s solid iron and weighs 34 tons. It is seriously big!

Further along the rocks galleries, they have lots of amazing displays showing all sorts of crystallization and gemstones. One quite extraordinary rock is a piece of mesolite from New Jersey, which looks like it’s covered in white hair.

Mesolite from New Jersey

From the rocks (I won’t bore you with any more about the rest of the marvellous things I saw) I went downstairs to the Hall of Human Origins where a cast of Lucy as well as Turkana Boy and the Flores (the so called Hobbit) were displayed.

Interestingly, Lucy didn’t look nearly as good as when I saw the real one in Houston! Still, the display of our ancestors, gradually moving through the millennia is excellent.

I was pretty much museum-ed out by this time so I went to the cafe for a coffee then trawled the museum shop. Quite apart from the size of the museum, the shop has to be the largest one I’ve ever seen! It covers three floors and has an incredible amount of stock. And that’s just the main shop. There’s another, smaller shop upstairs with the dinosaurs. Very American, I must say, and not in a bad way!

Stepping outside onto Central Park West was like walking into porridge. I stopped at a street vendor for a lovely New York pretzel then headed back to the subway and, eventually, to the hotel room for a good cool off.

I figured this was about my day over and was preparing to go and eat something when I had a text from Dawn asking me if I was anywhere near the High Line. She’d read about it in a magazine and thought it looked incredible. I looked it up online and decided to head on out again to see it for myself.

It wasn’t near me but was a subway ride to 23rd Street, which I managed like a native, and a wander down to 10th Avenue where the vision of an elevated railway line overgrown with wild flowers and people hits you as incongruously as it sounds.

Originally built in 1930s, it was a railway line for freight trains, lifted 30 feet into the air in order to avoid putting it along the streets of Manhattan. In 1980 it was no longer used and in 1999 it was under threat of demolition until a group of people calling themselves the Friends of the High Line managed to save it and turned it into a long, elevated garden.

It’s a wonderful use of space and preserves the structure which is wrought iron however, the noise from the streets below and the lack of shade, makes it a bit of an odd thing. I guess as the plants grow, the shade will increase but the traffic noise isn’t about to disappear any time soon. However, as a way to walk through the meatpacking district of New York, it’s certainly an improvement on street level!

A section of the High Line, New York

Obviously, Mirinda would have been very interested but there’s no way she’d have walked along it in the heat. I could only manage half of it before taking a set of steps back down to 24th Street then catching the subway back to the hotel.

I had a text from Mirinda saying she was hiding in the toilet because the conference was so boring. I guess her day hasn’t been as nice as mine.

This entry was posted in Gary's Posts, New York 2011 and tagged , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

One Response to Alice under repair

  1. mum cook says:

    Wow!! how you are managing the heat is great. Please may I have a magnet of a Dinosaur pretty please. That High Line looks very interesting would seem weird being that high up of the ground. Jan left yesterday for her Island and fell down the ramp going on the boat. She hurt her back, ankle and foot. She was crying her eyes out. Idonarose did not know what to do with her. Jan said she felt a right Idiot. love mum

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