Sunday in NY, Trees of Central Park, the Sex Museum and 3 Great Food Stops

This was an extraordinary day. Once again playing "Tourist in Our Own Backyard." Started like this, drove into NYC, found free parking on Amsterdam near 82nd street. Walked over to Columbus and 82nd to Tarallucci E Vino and got some great Italian coffee.

Walked over to Central Park and met our group, a fundraiser for Anatta World Health & Education Outreach, and Central Park tree expert, cartographer, and guide Ken Chaya, to begin our tour of Central Park’s amazing trees.

We have been playing tourist in our own backyard for many months now and nothing has been quite as amazing as this tour of Central Park to learn about all the amazing trees and birds that live there.

Ken Chaya is an artist and art director who has produced numerous books on travel, his illustrated map, Central Park Entire, locates over 19,000 trees and identifies them by species. He took us on a four hour walk of the area of the park around Belvedere Castle and in the Ramble. It was quite amazing to learn so much about the history, woods and bird and insect life of our beautiful park. You can find a link to his website below.

View of the Lake from in the Ramble

Always many surprises in the Park, here are jazz musicians playing near Belvedere Castle.

It was a gorgeous day so we wandered back over to Amsterdam Avenue to a favorite place, Hampton Chutney Company and had a wonderful lunch of Dosas and Uttapams.

Portabello Mushroom and Spinach Uttapam

From there we walked over to DSW on Broadway between 79^th and 80^th, what would being a tourist in NY be without some shopping. Diana found some great shoes.

Got back into the car and drove downtown, found free parking on 26^th street near Madison, another reason I love New York City on a Sunday lots of free parking.

I had gotten a Groupon, KGB Deal to be specific, for the Museum of Sex. I had heard so much about it.

I suppose you should see it at least once, but we were frankly a little disappointed. There are some interesting exhibts but the collection is not that deep.

Great Museum Gift Store though. You can find some very interesting gifts there.

We then drove downtown to have a glass of wine somewhere. First stopping at our former favorite Gottino, but something has changed there, they seem to be more focused on food and coffee than wine, some definite change of approach here, too bad.

We wondered over to a new place Vin sur Vingt at 201 West 11th Street, was not quite right, and then I remembered, Arai, the fabulous wine bar of Tanya Hira owner of two favorite places Xai Xai and Braai.