New York: Day 3

We woke up Tuesday morning around 8am and got ready for day 2 in New York. We walked through Central Park...

...and saw some really cool things. First, we saw the area where New York is pretending to be European, hence the castle in the middle of the park. Pretty, pretty views from the top of it.

Then we walked through to the other end, past the Met, and into a different part of the park.

King Jagiello. No idea who he is but I like his pose.

Cleopatra's Needle.

We followed them around the park for a few minutes.

The lake in the middle of the park.

Cool architecture.

Elm trees

We saw a string octet recording in a bandshell in the middle of the park. They were really good and it was fun to sit and listen for a few minutes.

Then we walked past the Alice and Wonderland statue...

(if anyone hasn't seen the new movie, I highly recommend it, the second time watching it was better than the first)

...and by this huge fountain

that I don't remember the significance of. Then we walked through The Mall, which is where part of “That's How You Know” from Enchanted was filmed. I love that movie. Then we got ice cream...

and saw some statues of people (Shakespeare, Columbus....)

Carousel by the boat house. I really wanted to ride but didn't want to pay $3.50 or whatever.

and walked past the lake and boathouse in 27 Dresses where her little sister wants to get married. (Aside: these movie references totally helped me when Hayley was explaining them to me... hope they are helping everyone else.)

The bridge in Enchanted where Prince Edward hears Giselle singing and puts his fist in his mouth. Hence, my fist in my mouth.

We ended up at Columbus Circle...

… and ate lunch at a restaurant that had some of the best honey mustard I've ever tasted. Yum. Then we went to the Museum of Natural History (yay!)

and I looked around and searched high and low for my favorites from Night at the Museum. I'm such a dork.

"How 'bout you darling, would you like a little kissy wissy?"

"Hey Dumb-Dumb, you bring me gum-gum?"

I want to play fetch with him.

Looong-neck, I mean, brachiosaurus.

Anyway, the only ones I couldn't find were Owen Wilson's little cowboy character and his Roman soldier buddy. Sad, because they are my favorite.

So about 3:30 we were sitting in the museum resting and trying to decide what to do with the rest of our night. Our options were student tickets to a random Broadway show (which would be awesome) and waiting in line in the heat for Shakespeare in the Park, Merchant of Venice featuring Al Pacino (which would also be awesome).

We decided to wait for those tickets. So, we get in line a 4pm to wait. And wait. And wait. And sweat and die. And wait. Jess (Hayley's totally awesome roommate) brought us water and some chips and salsa (seriously my favorite snack) and we waited some more. Some annoying saxophone player started playing, and he really wasn't very good, and started asking for money. Who does that? Finally he moved further away and we waited even more. Finally, right at 8pm (showtime) the guy came out with tickets for us!

We were 6^th row and seriously like 20 feet away from the stage. Al Pacino was fantastic as Shylock, and Jesse Tyler Ferguson (Mitchell from Modern Family – awesome) was Launcelot, and did a great job. Totally worth the 4 hour wait in the heat. After, we went home and went to bed.

*Image from Google Images. Also, this is from the movie, not the play we saw, but still gives you a good idea. He is much older now than in this picture, which added to the greatness of Shylock.