Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Flushing Meadow Park

The day before yesterday, Alex and I went to Flushing Meadow Park!

Flushing Meadow Park is a flagship park - enormous, green, full of many things such as museums, World's Fair sculptures, and Shea Stadium - at the end of the 7 line in Queens (well, almost. Flushing proper and its subway stop are one stop past the park).

We disembarked at 111th St., on the west side of the park, and walked in. Except we were walking along the road, and it turns into an overpass as it goes by the stadium, and you can't turn off of it and it crosses right over the park, which in that area is actually just a gross industrial mess and not hardly a park at all! And then we ran into a construction area! So we turned around and once we got back to the Mets subway stop, which we had passed on the way in, we noticed a pathway up and across the industrial mess, headed south. We took this path, which was like a boardwalk in the air with no water around, and came down amid beautiful greenery!

Yay! Success!

We explored - ventured into the lobby of the Queens Museum of Art - gazed at the sculpture of the world leftover from the World's Fair - I picked a flower or two with which to adorn my hair (only the ones that were profuse!) - wandered past scores of people engaging in soccer and volleyball and cricket and various other athletic pastimes - found a quieter green spot with a hill and some trees - had a picnic out of my Madeleine lunchbox! I had a peanut butter sandwich and a banana; he had saltines with chicken pate (Tom brought it home from class - none of us actually buys pate!); we both had See's candy, which had arrived the day before from my grandmother (thank you!). Delicious and delightful! Gustatory pleasure in an inspiring location! What could be better?

Flushing Meadow Park is for sure going to be my go-to park instead of Central Park from now on. It's wider and less citified, and it takes about the same amount of time to get to. I love it!

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