Ryan and I have been getting more settled in, and we are really enjoying our neighborhood! I tried to get some good shots of it when I went out one morning to buy groceries. I was trying to be discreet and not look like a tourist so I casually took some pictures with my iPhone.. but alas they aren't that great. Here they are anyway:
Our lobby in our building
See our lovely mailboxes. I am obsessed with checking them everyday. Ryan: "So your dad is a mailman, and you love mail." Maybe he is right!
Walking out of our lobby
This is what you see when you go outside and turn to the right
Rite Aid on the right as I walk towards the grocery store
I turned back around to get a picture of where I just walked. So you are facing our building (its on the left). The white building to the direct left is a Rite Aid. Its pretty convenient!
Across the street
Buildings around ours
Another main street with lots of shops
Our grocery store
A CVS thank goodness
A little market where I get our fruit and veggies from
I was trying to get better shots of the area
This is Johnson Avenue which is where a lot of good places to eat are. I will have to take a better picture later.
Oh yeah- we have a Starbucks (still haven't gone there yet)
Starbucks and Palace of Japan (the best sushi ever)
Lots of shops and restaurants
Our building is to the left
This is our side door that I actually use way more often.
Ok enough about our neighborhood. Well, one more thing! We also went walking around our area because we were told that some really awesome, old houses are less than a mile's walk away. When I say big houses, I mean mansions. Here is a quote I found on Wikipedia about Riverdale:
"Over the years, these areas, filled with multimillion-dollar homes, have attracted the rich and privileged, including Lou Gehrig, Ella Fitzgerald and Sugar Ray Robinson. John F. Kennedy spent his youth in an enormous white mansion on Independence Avenue."
So, we set out to find them.. but we got side-tracked when we found this amazing little park that runs along the Hudson River. It's called the Riverdale Park.
Lots of walking trails
It was very green
Can you see the Hudson through the trees? Those are train tracks at the bottom if you were wondering
Ryan scoping it all out
Hudson River
Big trees
Pretty!
Ok now I really am done with the Riverdale lesson. So, guess what we did....
We went to The American Museum of Natural History!!!
And boy was it awesome! It was very cool and so large that it was impossible for us to see everything in one day. I think we only saw about half of it, and we were pooped! We were like "Can we stop learning now?"
We were able to get a student discount which was really nice, and we got tickets to view the "Creatures of Light- Nature's Bioluminescence." This turned out to be a little bit of a bust because the whole exhibit was in the dark where you walked around and learned about different creatures that glow. One of them being "fireflies" or as we Southerners call them "lightnin' bugs." Ryan was like "We came all the way here to learn about lightnin' bugs?? We have these everywhere back home. I used to pull the glowy-part-thing off of the bug and rub it all over myself to glow at night!" haha I am pretty sure that the guide wouldn't have appreciated that. But anyway, it was ok. We were just expecting more of a show or something. They wouldn't let me take pictures in the dark.. so there is nothing to show for that part. Sorry!
Here is Ryan outside of the big entrance. See the trees in the background? They line the entire block that encloses the gigantic museum. I thought they were pretty cool looking.
What you see when you walk in. Kinda like a space ship
I really enjoyed looking at all of the dinosaur bones and skeletons! So cool!
Ryan with the brontosaurus maybe?
Close up
They were huge
Really big
Ryan described this as one of the dinosaurs on Jurassic Park... so I got a picture :)
T-Rex!
Ryan was being very studious while I took pictures
Look at its tiny, baby arms
Ryan and the T-Rex
I had to do it too
Stegosaurus
We got to actually touch one of the dinosaur's plates (and a million other people's germs... ewww!)
We touched another plate which was 140 million years old but note the trash that people put in the display case... how rude!
More Jurassic Park dinosaurs
I made Ryan take lots of pictures for me!
There were about 10 other people watching while we took this picture.. so it was a little distracting.. don't worry. I handled it like a champ. This wasn't my first rodeo.
Sabor tooth cat (close to a saber tooth tiger I think). I was hoping to find it to take a picture of. Whenever I say that or think of saying it, I can't help but think of Power Rangers.. Yes, I am a dork.
Wooly mammoth
Big!
I thought this was hilarious. Ryan trying to use the water fountain! hahahaha He was too big for it!
Another dinosaur in one of the entrances that we stumbled upon
So the dinosaurs were pretty hard to beat, but we kept up the tour with animals. It wasn't as fun as looking at real, live animals but it was pretty cool, nonetheless.
Of course I had to get Ole Miss's mascot
Creepy wolves on display (these are all stuffed animals by the way)
"Honey badger don't care" hahaha I had to take a picture.
So... we thought that it was hilarious that they had to put up a sign to tell people not to sit in this actual clam....
Ryan and the forbidden clam shell
Creepy stuffed tiger. I felt like it was looking at me and was going to break through the glass at any moment
Cool sharks and fish
Blurry but Ryan is in the rain forest display
VERY VERY VERY Big blue whale hanging from the ceiling
Ryan making a face for me
Big whale
This was the ocean part of the exhibit. Once again, not as cool as the aquarium but oh well
Ryan in the dark ocean exhibit
Fish that we knew from scuba diving
Mahi Mahi
Funny exhibit of a giant squid
On the outside. See how huge it is! It looks like a castle!
Old building- 1869
We were tired of learning by this point
Walking back to the subway. I love all of the buildings!
And look what we found: Brother Jimmy's! This was one of our favorite places to go on the island, and we saw the NY one. We didn't go, but we may have to just for old time's sake.
I also found a great park that is less than half a mile away. It is huge with tons of cross country trails, and it even has a track. http://www.runyourcity.com/state/ny/new-york-city/running-map-of-new-york-city/bronx/running-map-van-cortlandt-park
I am trying to motivate myself to get up and go there now! Wish me luck!
So that about sums it up for our adventures! Ryan finished his Infectious Diseases rotation, and he is now doing General Medicine. He is really enjoying being at the hospital and actually doing doctor things! My caseload is filling up, and I now have 18 students. It's going to be a busy year! Sadly, this week hasn't been busy at all due to Hurricane Isaac, and I hope that all of my students and their families are safe.
I hope that everyone has a great and safe Labor Day weekend! More pictures to come of our actual apartment once it is more decorated and cute.. :)
