Our Walk up 5th Avenue to Central Park

So after lunch at St. Andrews we headed over and up 5th Avenue.  Many of the stores have beautiful window disaplays.  Here are a couple of shots of the windows at American Girl Place (surprise, surprise):
 

 

  

 

  

Saks is famous for their windows and I'm sorry I don't have pics of those, but we did stop to look at them.  These windows are so famous and popular they have metal barricades set up to funnel people past them.  There are also barricades at the edge of the sidewalk so people don't spill out into the street.  It can get incredibly crowded in front of the windows.  One year a few years back we were coming through and I had DD in an umbrella stroller.  There was such a crush of people - I've never been pushed a long in a crowd like that - it was actually frightening.  Now we walk on the other side of the street if it looks crowded by the Saks Christmas windows.

  

There are a lot of other interesting stores along the way like a giant Build-A-Bear Store and Disney Store, Takashimaya, Tiffanys, the shops at Trump Tower (this is a neat building - there is an illiminated indoor waterfall inside which is pretty cool), Cartier, Bergdorf Goodman and FAO Schwarz, to name just a few.

  

We always go into FAO Schwarz.  Yes, they do have the big piano on the floor from the movie "Big", and yes - you can "play" it!  We didn't do that this year, but we've played on the big piano before.  It's a really fun store.  Sometimes it's so crowded you have to actually wait on line to get in.

  

Just past FAO Schwarz you come to Central Park.  It's a beautiful place.  You can even take a horse and carriage ride though the park if you like, and the driver will tell you all sorts of interesting things about Central Park.  We did that last year, and it was kind of funny because our driver was Russian!  How New York. :-)  This year we went to visit the Balto statue:

  

 

  

   
The inscription reads: "Dedicated to the indomitable spirit of The Sled Dogs that relayed antitoxin six hundred miles over rough ice, across treacherous waters, through arctic blizzards from Nenana to the relief of stricken Nome in the winter of 1925.  Endurance - Fidelity - Intelligence"

  
If you're not familiar with the heroic and interesting story of Balto and the sled dogs, you can read more here.

  
I think this post has gotten long enough - come back soon to hear about the last "leg" of our trip. :-)
 
The end.