Day 229 - Thanks Google Maps

New York City

We awoke to another nice day, so it seemed a shame to waste some of it, but we had already decided that we'd visit the Museum of Natural History. We walked there from our apartment, and found it wasn't too busy, the good thing about visiting museums on a nice weekday is that they are relatively quiet.

There were at least a couple of highlights in the museum. First there was the various animal sections, with lifelike models of animals of all sizes set within realistic scenery, made from the actual skin, teeth and bones of animals killed in the wild - we had no idea bears could be that big! There was also a very impressive dinosaur display with lots of reconstructed skeletons.

We didn't want to spend too long inside though, so the lovely day inspired us to head further afield, and we caught the train to the Bronx. It was obvious not long into the train journey that the demographics had changed, and once we started walking the streets of the Bronx we felt at times that we were back in South America, some parts of the suburb were quite run down and different to the nice clean part of Manhattan we'd been staying in.

USA's national bird - behind bars!

We used Google Maps to plot a course for us from the station to the "real" Little Italy in the Bronx, and for some reason it directed us to go through a part of the Bronx Zoo. On the way through we managed to get a look at the Birds of Prey exhibit, which included a lone tawny frogmouth from Tasmania. What we found espeically sad though was the Andean condor that was huddled on the ground in a corner. After having seen these majestic birds in the wild in the Andes soaring at a great height, it really seems cruel to lock birds like this in a cage where they're not able to fly at all. We are not exactly sure how we managed to get in to see any of the exhibits in the zoo, as we didn't pay to get in, and we exited through a gate that was closed to the general public.

The Little Italy in the Bronx was an area with lots of Italian restaurants, and some shops/delicatessens - a little similar to the one in Manhattan, but presumably more authentic as it was frequented largely by the local Italians, many of which were out on the street chatting to each other, and we couldn't see any other tourists while we were there.

We caught the train home again and finished the evening at the riverside bar we'd visited yesterday. .

We've been the following the news about Hurricane Matthew, so we are glad we left the Caribbean and Florida only a short time ago, somehow on this trip we have managed to be a couple of weeks behind or ahead of the major storms during this part of the year (first Earl and now Matthew).