5: Central Park - (Part of the uptown tour) is a MUST visit sight with its wonderful lakes and greens filled with people of all walks of life enjoying picnics, exercising on all kinds of kinetic equipment or just basking in the sun. A beautiful, quiet place filled with romantic walks… As well as, of course the Central Park Zoo… and a boating lake for model yachts. At the time I was there it was the 63rd Anniversary of the foundation of the state of Israel, so there was a HUGE parade going down 5th Avenue closing the street to all traffic (including our tour bus)!! Israeli flags flew all along the roadsides while marching bands played and people celebrated the foundation of their nation… Quite an event which on its completion led to a perfectly choreographed clean-up operation including lots of police to clear away barriers, street sweepers [some equipped with garden blowers] to clear litter from the sidewalks and finally massive, I mean to say… MASSIVE street cleaning trucks with brushes and hoovers to suck up all the rubbish from the street… Then the traffic was released to flow once more…
The end of day one saw me heading back to the hotel in the early evening to get some much needed sleep…