I wanted to get an early start today for our last day in NYC.  I made a list of everything I still wanted to see and then plotted everything on a map.  In the end, we didn’t get to everything but that leaves a reason to come back! 

We had a little trouble with our subway cards today.  We bought weekly unlimited cards and we think we must have double swiped two of them (i.e. swiped them twice at the same station without waiting the required 18 minutes between swipes) which caused a regular fare to be deducted and invalidated our weekly pass.  Annoying but we just paid regular fares today for those two cards and in the end, we were only out $6 dollars (the unlimited passes were $35 though). 

I tried to get Cal to play on this free piano in the subway station.  He played a few chords and then declared it too out of tune to play. 

We walked to the 9/11 memorial since I hadn’t seen it yet.

The kids were really excited about this “Toothless” sculpture (from How to Train Your Dragon).

We took the subway to Central Park.  Central Park is HUGE.

I was surprised how varied the terrain is inside the park.  I thought it would be pretty flat and manicured but it wasn’t.  There were a lot of cool rock formations and boulders but we were more interested in pop culture spots today.

First up, Hamilton monument.  At 10 am it was already 80 degrees.  We needed our first break after reaching Hamilton so we put out our blanket down and had a snack and drink from our backpacks. 

Nole got this double solar fan hat for Father’s Day and it came in handy today! 

Then we walked to Turtle Pond where Asa rescued this turtle from a fenced in area where it got itself trapped.

This is the King Wladyslaw Jagiello Monument.

Nole and I really like Enchanted, a Disney movie.  The kids have all seen it too and we rewatched the “That’s how you know” scene at the park so we could look for the Central Park sites shown in the sequence. 

Gapstow Bridge

Naumburg Bandshell

The Lake

The Mall

Sheep’s Meadow

Bow Bridge

Bethesda Fountain

Besides Enchanted, many films have used Central Park as a backdrop.

We saw many other cool things including…

The Bethesda Arcade

Giant baby geese

Central Park Carousel

Chess boards

General William Tecumseh Sherman monument by Saint Gaudens

Snowflake Hydrangea.  Hydrangea are very popular in New England!

We also rented remote control sailboats, a life goal for me!  I had seen it in many movies and always wanted to try it. 

And we bought fruit from a vendor while waiting out a storm under an archway.

The boys split up with us, met up with Joey, and went to a Juneteenth concert featuring a performer that Cal really likes.

Meanwhile, Nole, the girls and I left Central Park and went to Casey Rubber Stamps.  I had seen a feature on this place and wanted to check it out. 

The girls picked this stamp out of a catalog and they made it for us while we waited. 

We walked from there to Economy Candy, so nice that we visited twice!

We met up with Asa, Cal, and Joey at Il Cortile, a classic Italian place in Little Italy. 

Then we took the subway/PATH train back to Jersey.  My step count was 25,854.  The girls probably did more because their legs are shorter…and they did it all in Crocs!!