Our younger daughter had read about the New York Easter parade (https://www.nycgo.com/events/easter-parade-and-easter-bonnet-festival1) on the internet and urged us to go there. Like a lot of the sites the parade was within walking distance from our hotel so we decided to give it a try.

For Easter Parade people were gathering around St Patricks Cathedral on 5th street wearing costumes and very creative hats.

We drifted with the crowd a bit until we ended up in front of the Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue/ 56th Street. The tower is guarded by security staff with serious looking guns. To get inside you have to go through security checks almost like the ones at the airport. The interior of the tower is quite opulent, lots of gold and wooden panneling, with a waterfall cascading down several stories of the building.

When you continue up 5th Street northwards (uptown to the New Yorkers) you hit the right bottom corner of Central Park where the zoo is located. Even though it was quite cold we decided to take a stroll across the park.

Central Park is a quiet zone right in the middle of this hectic and vibrant city. All street noise resides and for me it felt like a yoga practice of “breath in and breath out and let go” after all the horn blaring and side stepping around the people.

In the middle of the park we came across a group of acrobats who entertained a large crowd. The kids and hubby enjoyed the performance while I indulged in some people (and dog) watching.

We left Central Park at the “Imagine” (Strawberry Fields) memorial for John Lennon.

On my daughter’s wish list for New York was seeing the Stark Tower of the “Avengers” movies. We looked it up on Google maps, but then did not do any further research. Well, we should have because the house we went to was a regular housing complex that looked rather run down. The Stark building of the movies apparently is purely fictional.

Nonetheless we enjoyed experiencing a different part of New York with a noticeable Jewish influence.

Next on our “to see” list was Bryant Park which we kept seeing in the “White Collar” series we all enjoyed.

It is a beautiful park that almost has a Euopean vibe to it with all the sitting areas. Unfortunately it was too cold to stay too long.

We continued to the New York Public Library- another one on my wish list. Due to Easter holiday the library was closed, however.

After some shopping at Urban Outfitters (to keep the teenagers happy) we took the metro to Madison Square Park to see the Flatiron Building.

By this time we were all tired and cold. So we headed back to the hotel grabbing a few salad bowls in a grocery store along the way for dinner and called it a day.