Sunday 16th and monday 17th June

A morning full of temples followed by an afternoon of fun fair fun :)

We went to a very ornate Hindu Temple and watched the bathing of Ganesh ceremony- very bizarre experience in which the statue of the Elephant god (which the Hindus worship as sort of the deity itself) is bathed in milk, yogurt, water, orange juice, oil amongst other unidentifiable things! The day was kind of a rush of temples- another Hindu one, a Sikh one and a Thai Buddhist one- all were incredibly welcoming to us and they all kept trying to feed us..we did have authentic Hindu cuisine for brunch which was very nice :)
The afternoon was spent sitting by the beach at Coney Island- Visited the famous Lunar park and won a Pirate Patrick the starfish and a mini racing driver Roey duck on the arcade machines! We also tried corn dogs from the original Nathan's which were unfortunately kind of disappointing :( The day ended with a visit to café Glechnik in little Russia and tried Russian dumplings which were surprisingly yummy :)

Today is Monday and we started the day with a visit to Amnesty International- I have to admit that I wasn't exactly excited about it because I've never really taken much interest in AI. However, I have realised today that the organisation is not what I thought it was and it is actually a very important body which does amazing work through the sheer power of social pressure. It was hot hot hot today to the point where it was uncomfortable and sticky- jokingly I was walking along saying take me back to the cold and rain... within 5 minutes it was raining and everyone was blaming me haha It was actually quite nice though as the air was still warm and the rain was cool and light so it was refreshing. Plus you can't complain about a little bit of rain when you're walking through Central Park! It was another perfect, authentic, 'New York' moment walking through the trees with a guy playing slow jazz to the side of us and a street dance performance going in up ahead :) We walked a few blocks from the park to the Museum of Natural History- where night at the Museum is based :)The geek in me was satisfied by seeing all the dinosaurs (the girls were actually laughing at how much of an excited child I was when I saw them!) and we spent some time lying under the huge Blue whale suspended from the ceiling, feeling very tiny. To me Central Park followed by the Museum of Natural History was a perfect way to spend the afternoon.

So that's what I've been doing the past couple of days.. sorry it's late and short! Pictures will follow when I have time/energy!