America Photos, Part 6

The weather in New York was so beautiful. Most days we could wear short sleeves and then just throw on a jacket at night.

The one exception to this rule, of course, was the day we took the ferry to the Statue of Liberty. Silly me went off for the day in a t-shirt and shorts, not thinking what the wind would be like once we were on the water.

Hence, I bought the first warm looking piece of clothing I could find.
And it happened to be this:

Which wasn't so bad really, because I had planned to get something with the famous "I Heart NY" on it anyway!



Liberty Island was really pretty. It had all these pink cherry trees around the edge, which were all in bloom and so pretty!






We walked around the whole island (which wasn't very big) and then thought we'd go inside the statue (even though you can't climb to the top anymore) but when we walked around, there was a huge line waiting to go inside and we thought, forget it!

We went to the gift shop instead!

And what trip to the Statue of Liberty would be complete without trying on ridiculous merchandise such as this:


No I didn't buy it. I figured the Mickey ears from Disneyland were kitsch enough!


Once we got back to Manhattan, we spent the rest of the day exploring. We found a memorial for the Korean War right in the heart of the city.




I was quite touched by it because my Grandad served in the war for New Zealand.

Each country that had contributed was given a space for their flag and a part of the pavement with the number of their dead and wounded engraved into the concrete.

We kept walking and found this amazing church that had such a beautiful garden.

As we got closer, we realised that the garden was a graveyard! Each plot had these bright flowers in a different colour- yellow, orange, pink. It was so pretty and I remember thinking "When I'm buried, I want to be buried in a graveyard like that!"

Not only that, but it was a kind of famous church:

Oh yes, the Queen stood where we stood. So we are famous-by-proxy, right?

We kept walking and soon found ourselves walking along a very famous street:



Then we got back on the Hop on-Hop off bus so we could see a bit more of Manhattan.

Hello, Brooklyn Bridge!



I had to take a photo of this:

This is where Derek Shepheard from Grey's Anatomy - yes, I know he's a fictional character, but still! - went to medical school. Pretty cool, huh?

That night, we went to see Mary Poppins on Broadway. We actually hadn't planned to see it, but we found out that if you line up in the middle of Times Square at the tckts booth at 3pm, you can buy really cheap tickets for the remaining seats of those shows playing later that night that haven't sold out yet. We ended up getting awesome seats, like seven rows from the front! The show was amazing. I wish I could've taken photos. It was the most colourful, vibrant show I've ever seen.

A few nights later, we went to see West Side Story, which was the show we had bought tickets for in advance. We had seats on the mezzanine level, which were really good as well. Both shows were awesome, but very different. WSS was a drama, and very moving, while Mary Poppins was just fun!

The shopping in America was one thing. It was amazing. Sales, sales, sales, everywhere. The food in America was another. It was gross. Seriously, I don't know how celebrities manage to stay thin, because we tried to eat healthily and it's just not possible! You can't do it! Everything is processed, fried, refined... until there's no nutritional value left! We thought the food situation would get better once we got to New York, but we were wrong. It was the same old hamburger-pizza-fries combination everywhere you went.

That was, until we went here:



The Magnolia Bakery only makes cakes and cupcakes. They are most famous for the latter. On Sex & the City, Carrie & Miranda sat outside the Magnolia Bakery eating these cupcakes with a ginormous amount of frosting, and boom - the bakery was famous.




I cannot describe these cupcakes to you. They are indescribable. Such amazing-ness deserves more words than I can type. Look at that frosting. Incredible.

One one of our last days, we went to Central Park. I loved it there.



It was so green! That was one of the first things I noticed about it.



It would be impossible to walk around the whole park, so we got a map and walked through to the otherside, where we were going to the Museum of Natural History.


I could've stayed there all day.

This was the view as we were walking out of the park, towards the Museum. Amazing.