My family had given us a dinner at the Loeb Boathouse as a wedding gift, and we had still not gone there, so we figured this would be a fitting opportunity to get that dinner.
But not before we went to the Central Park zoo! We had never actually been there and we were curious.
We got funny looks at the sea lion enclosure when we both did our best sea lion-impression (mine was better of course)
The Central Park zoo isn't very big, but it is very well made and maintained, the animal enclosures look sensible and also beautiful. I love that most zoos today aren't the concrete and iron cages they were years ago. I'm not going to post all of the animal pictures I made, because I'm no Frans Lanting and it's way more fun to look at live animals than pictures anyway. Just a few pics;
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| Turtles sunbathing. These guys actually live in the wild here as well, which is pretty cool. I like turtles. |
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| Shooting animals at the zoo. Good thing Bram is no dentist! |
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| Lucky shot. |
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| We found one of Ringo's cousins. We knew they were related because, like Ringo, this little fella slept right through the noise all the people around him were making. |
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| Yet another bird falling for Bram's irresistible charm. This one didn't try to kill me though, so it's ok. They look so cute together! |
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| The intelligence garden was the only part of the zoo that was completely desolate. Until mr smartypants here showed up. |
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| Serpent. |
After a fun couple of hours in the zoo, we strolled over to Loeb's Boathouse where I had already made reservations. We got a seat at the water, so the view was gorgeous!
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| And so was the company. ;) |
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| No mosquitoes! Amazing! |
We had dinner and a glass of wine, and when we asked for the dessert menu our waitress accidentally handed Bram the kids menu. So when she came back to take our order Bram put on his most serious face and ordered the Sesame Street hamburger meal with french fries and the surprise toy. Our waitress looked horrified until we both started laughing, then she cracked up as well. XD
But, we did get got our dessert, which made up for bram's disappointment when he didn't get his hamburger and surprise toy, then we paid with my family's money (that was fun, too!) and walked back home.
While walking through a darker area of Central Park I suddenly grabbed Bram's arm and pointed between the bushes. There were fireflies EVERYWHERE! We had both never seen fireflies before so we stayed to admire them for quite a while. It was magical and I was giddy like a schoolgirl the rest of the way home.
I had filmed a couple of things during the day, including the fireflies. When I got home I discovered I had accidentally set my recording speed to 60 FPS, which turned out to look really cool. So I made a compilation of the footage.
Last week, Bram felt like getting out of the city again for a weekend (concrete gets boring, hard as that is to believe) so he rented a car and booked a hotel room, I made us sandwiches and off we went.
We discovered that Americans are exceptionally good at stealing place names from other countries and using them as their own. In fact, "America" is a small town in the Netherlands. (Okay, we may or may not have stolen that one)
So when we discovered that the city of Amsterdam was only a 3 hour drive away, our destination was decided!
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| Oh come on America! REALLY!? Ok fine, I'll have a kapsalon then. |
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| Decidedly fewer hookers and drugs here. I kinda liked it. |
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| Where are the tulips and wooden shoes? |
After all this excitement we thought it high time to get to the hotel, which Bram booked in Albany. (The capitol of New York. And another vaguely familiar name...)
After we settled in, we went to find something to eat.
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| Albany looked pretty cool. |
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| I don't even know what this building is. Pretty though. |
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| "Step aside woman, I want to take a picture." |
We ended up in a Belgian themed restaurant/pub.
That means there was a large selection of beer and Belgische frietekes!
Hurray!
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| Cheers! (I had the Valar Morghulis beer, it was excellent.) |
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| OMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOM |
Finally, after stumbling back to the hotel, calling the front desk at midnight to ask for a room that actually did have a working airconditioner and packing up our stuff again to move to said room, we had a good night's sleep. The next morning we were greeted by a breakfast that exceeded our expectations, we ate our fill and went on our merry way.
Recommended by a site that makes lists of the best weekend trips out of NYC, Howe Caverns were on our list of places to visit next. So we hopped in the car, set the gps and off we went again!
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| We found Grandma Duck's farm! |
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| After paying 50 dollars we were led to this room. Very old-timey. |
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| What the hell is Hugo doing here!? |
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| Lester Howe's second wife. In this case it's probably a good thing the photo is blurry.. |
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| A calm babbling brook. Underground. Okay, that is pretty sweet. |
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| This natural rock formation took 6 million years to develop but it was worth the wait! It can totally charge your iPhone! |
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| We can scratch "underground boat tour" off our bucket list. Finally. |
While most of the caverns were honestly a bit underwhelming, when we finally got to the last part, Howe Caverns totally redeemed themselves! The Winding Way was narrow, winding and absolutely gorgeous! It reminded me of those pictures of Antelope Canyon you always see as computer backgrounds.
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| So pretty! |
And then our eyes were adjusting to the bright daylight again (and our bodies to the summer temperatures outside)
We stuck around the neighbourhood for a bit to enjoy the crap out of all that nature before heading back to the city.
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| We enjoyed the crap out of all that nature on this side of the fence. |
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| There's really no way I could resist. |
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| On our way home Bram spotted a cloud that looked like a bird! It even had a little foot, lol! Also, the asshole on that motorcycle pulled out in front of us, going less than half our speed, making Bram slam the brakes just not to hit the idiot. |
