ROWING IN CENTRAL PARK
Central Park is probably my favorite place in NYC, for a moment you forget you are in a concrete jungle with 8 million people living there. It’s the 5th biggest park in the city, with 843 acres. In 1857, landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a design competition for the park with their “Greensward Plan”. The building of the park began the same year and it was finished in 1876. Central Park has dozens of attractions and places to see and things to do. From taking a walk to taking a jog, picnic, horse carriage ride, read a book and so on. One of the things I really wanted to do was to rent a boat and row on the Lake.
The Lake covers 20 acres and it is surrounded by the Loeb (restaurant and cafe), Bethesda Terrace and Fountain, numerous bridges including the Bow bridge, and beautiful views of New York. At the lake you can rent a boat or have a gondola ride. The price to rent a boat is 20$ for an hour, with a 20$ deposit, every extra hour is 20$. The maximum is 4 people per boat. They only accept cash so make sure you have cash. An hour is enough to go around the lake all the way to the end and take plenty of pictures. My advice is to go during the week, since on weekend it is pretty crowded. We went on a Monday and there was no line for renting and not that many boats in the lake.
It’s a perfect location for a date, or just a different kind of NYC activity. They are open from April to November from 10am to dusk, there is no reservation it’s on a walk-in basis.
