My Week In New York – April 2012 | Adventures of The SIA Brat

The SIA Brat – In New York City, United States of America

[Riding On Bikes In Central Park]

New York Pass; to buy or not to buy? Good question. The trick is to weigh the pros and cons. First, go to their website and find out which attractions do you have access to free of charge after purchasing the Pass. Second, you determine the cost of those attractions and add them all up. Third, compare and decide. Simple. Well, when you have 3 people making a decision on the matter and the lack of time to do the necessary research, then it’s not quite that simple. Eventually, we did get the New York Pass and I totally did not regret the decision. I don’t quite know the exact savings we had by purchasing the Pass, but we did and we also had a very useful guidebook that helped us plan our days.

Now Central Park was on all four of our to do lists even before we stepped foot on American soil. So when we finally had the time to explore New York City, Central Park was one of our first stops.

Central Park is a public park so why would this have anything to do with the New York Pass right? Bike Tours. Something that we could do for free because of the New York Pass. Because we purchased the Pass, we could enjoy a free bike tour of Central Park at 9am or a 3hr bike rental. As we weren’t familiar with Central Park at all, we decided a guided bike tour would allow us to really see the park without the hassle of worrying if we’d get lost in this massive nature wonderland. After all, at 843 acres, 2.5 miles long and 0.5 miles wide, Central Park is needless to say, MASSIVE! You could live in New York City for months and not experience all that Central Park has to offer. And my friends and I only had a week.

So off we went, riding on bikes in Central Park. It was so fun! While I didn’t get a chance to truly relax and enjoy the park, I was able to see most of what Central Park had to offer to New Yorkers. And Central Park made me fall in love with New York City even more. Maybe these photographs can help you fall in love with Central Park too.

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Exploring Central Park on a bicycle makes for a very good workout session and it also allows you to see more of the park in a shorter time span. After experiencing how huge the park really is, movies really don’t do Central Park justice, I realised how glad I was that we travelled around Central Park on our bikes, and for free too!

While biking around Central Park isn’t the only means of transport around the park, it was the first one I tried. I know that you can tour Central Park on a horse-drawn carriage, but I found out that you can also go on a private Vespa Tour or if you can’t ride a bike and want to cover more ground, perhaps you’d like to try a Pedicab Tour? On my next visit to Central Park, I’d take a day or two to walk around Central Park to see it more closely. Perhaps I’ll go on one of the many walking tours they have in Central Park as well.

For now I’ll just go through my old NYC photos and dream about my next trip there. But more about my week in New York City will be coming up in the My Week In New York City – April 2012 series so do look out for it.

What do you think?

What is the best way to explore Central Park? Which part of the park is your favourite? Are you a fan of bike tours? I’ve already done a bike tour in Paris and New York City, which other country or city should I explore on a bike?