The highs and lows of moving from London to New York with young kids
It was Yom Kippur and Eid Al-Adha last week, which caused many of the New York schools to close for a few days. T and I took the opportunity to keep exploring, so we tried Brooklyn’s Prospect Park Zoo.
Continue reading “Prospect Park Zoo – good for younger kids”
We’ve lived here almost a year now, astoundingly, and realised we still hadn’t ventured north of Central Park. So we decided to go really far north, all the way up to The Bronx for the famous Bronx Zoo. And so glad we did, as it’s the best zoo we’ve ever visited.
We took the number 5 train all the way up to 180th East Street (hadn’t realised before this that the street numbers continue right off Manhattan up into The Bronx), which took well over an hour. The station was a little run down, with lots of posters warning you to ‘be smart and not to flash your smart phone around’. But just a few minutes’ walk away we reached the zoo, and were wrapped up in all the wildlife and greenery. Such a treat to escape the pressure cooker that is Manhattan in July for a few hours.
Continue reading “Exploring the Bronx Zoo”
We went on a bear hunt – and actually saw a bear. Two bears, in fact.
An hour’s drive from Manhattan is Bear Mountain State Park, which we’d happily recommend to families of any age.
We had such a brilliant day. Got up pre-dawn (ugh) and drove our rental car up the motorway deceptively called West Street, over the George Washington Bridge… and suddenly you’re in the countryside. The leaves are just starting to turn golden and orange, astonishingly beautiful.
After two months on one of the world’s busiest islands, it felt wonderful to see such long distances with practically no sign of man. You could just glimpse the Manhattan sky line in the very far distance, and the occasional suspension bridge crossing the Hudson River. Apart from that, just densely wooded hills and misty valleys. Brilliant. Both girls loved scrambling over the rocks at the summit, Perkins Memorial Tower.
Continue reading “We’re Going On a Bear Hunt – Bear Mountain State Park”
