NYC in the Summer

Although it may be hot and humid, summer is the best season to visit NYC if you’re on a budget. The City offers so many free events around the different boroughs that it’s hard not to find an event you might enjoy.

Stage before it got dark and before
singers started performing.

A few weeks ago, there was a traveling classical theatre troupe performing Moliere’s The School for Husbands in Central Park. When I write “traveling,” I literally mean traveling. After each scene, all the actors and audience members would move to another part of the park, re-situate themselves, and continue the show. Philip and I showed up late, so we didn’t stay, but we were at the park long enough to see them travel. It was interesting.

Eating brick-oven pizza while waiting
for friends.

Last week, Philip and I attended a Met Opera recital at Summer Stage in Central Park with a couple friends of ours, Ryan and Tiffany. Although you’re not allowed to supply your own alcohol in the park, there was a beer and wine vendor at the event. They also had brick oven pizza, taco, hot dog, and ice cream vendors there. Hot dogs, by the way, are not always typical in NYC. This particular stand offered hot dogs made with different meats, including a vegetarian version.




It’s like a picnic everywhere you go. We took our blanket to the Met Opera, which we set on top of something (carpet? fake grass?) they used to establish a seating area. The seating area comprised of a roped off section with fold-up chairs for Met Opera members, as well as floor seating on both sides of the members-only section. Behind that section were metal bleachers for non-members who didn’t want to sit on the ground.


There are so many other free events that people can take advantage of that it doesn’t matter if you’re a broke college student or artist or actor trying to make it in the glamorous city of Manhattan.

Do Whatever You Want To Do

(Blogger was out of service for a couple of days, but I had this blog ready to go. This is my 5.12.11 blog.)

I finally got to go to Central Park today, and it was just as breathtaking today as it was last summer. 

Contrary to what I once believed, Central Park is not like the small parks people are accustomed to in Phoenix. It is 2.5 miles long and .5 miles wide. For you cowboys, that’s 843 acres.  And it’s just like the movies.

There are trees, bike paths, walk/run paths, small bodies of water, short waterfalls, rocks you can climb, rocks you can sit on, benches, dogs, frisbees, picnics, little children with their nannies, baseball games...and they are everywhere in the park. It is truly picturesque...exactly how you would imagine a park to look.

A group of young adults were playing frisbee a couple trees away. 

After playing with her little brother and parents by the pond/lake about 100 feet in front us, a little girl, with a big innocent smile on her face, joyfully reached up for her daddy to hold her. 

An old man was walking his small dog, perhaps a yorkie, when the dog’s butt became itchy and he stopped to drag it on the sidewalk before strutting off with dirt and leaves hanging from his rear.

Everything you could think of was happening all around us, but we just wanted to relax and enjoy a nice book. We snagged a spot in a grassy area surrounded by tall, luscious trees, and Philip read Water for Elephants while I read To the Lighthouse.

It was a beautiful day.