Friday, April 17, 2015

Easter Break Part 3

I've finally got round to writing up the rest of the holiday. Less writing it up and more collating the pictures.

In the morning, we were at the doors of the Empire State Building pretty much in time for it opening, since our hotel was in it's shadow. After that, we wandered off to see the NY Library and Bryant Park, where we found another carousel, then lunch, then off to central park to play while the sisters headed off to MoMA.

The last picture has Abi listening at the whispering arch at Grand Central Station.

The next day we went to the Natural History Museum. That took all day, as it should, and we still missed out the whole planetarium part.

 The kids touching a fossil egg, and LP with her favourite, a triceratops.

Abi and her monkey from the Empire Stare building with a Proganochelys, which is a favourite in the dinosaur train episodes we have. Yay for education through television!

That night, the grandparents looked after the kids, and the adults went our for a few cocktails, and a walk through Times square. Where we were mobbed by some famous people!

 

The last day of our stay in New York was spent wandering through Little Italy and Chinatown.

 
 
 

K organised a place in Brooklyn for two nights, our day in that part of town was spent going round the Brooklyn Children's Museum and the Transit Museum.

 

Then back into Manhattan for a last dinner with the rest of the family before they all headed their separate ways.
 

Quote of the Week

"It would be foolish to despise tradition. But with our growing self-consciousness and increasing intelligence we must begin to control tradition and assume a critical attitude toward it, if human relations are ever to change for the better. We must try to recognize what in our accepted tradition is damaging to our fate and dignity—and shape our lives accordingly."
Albert Einstein (1946).

From Einstein's short essay,  'The Negro Question'. Whilst taken in context, it refers to race relations, a subject that has pertinence 70 years later. However, this also talks to a great deal of issues that can be seen as traditions that persist both here in Canada, and back in the homeland that require critical analysis, and yet are blithely maintained.

This is something I struggle with sometimes, seeing the need for reform, whilst still wanting to maintain strong links to the past and tradition, although, as I age, I seem to be erring more on the side of reform. This may be more as I become of an age where I can actively do something about it, maybe in my later years I will return to a more conservative outlook.