a tour of prospect park & more

Today - March seventh - it reached 71 degrees here in Brooklyn. I couldn't stay inside, so I went on a walk through beautiful Prospect Park (which is luckily only a block from my house) and the surrounding area.

I SAW: Winding trails, rolling hills. Families strolling, little girls skipping, boys with scooters. Children running, flying kites and digging for worms. A man doing yoga. Couples walking hand-in-hand. Friends with footballs, baseballs, frisbees and picnic baskets. Runners, bikers, dog-walkers. Melting snow uncovering leftover fall leaves. Puddles, mud, branches.

Spring has definitely come to Prospect Park.

I sat under this tree, in the most ideal crook imaginable, and watched a group of people playing football while talking to my mother on the phone. A slight breeze blew through the park, and it was almost perfect.

The ice on the park's ponds is melting - finally!

There are so many great places to sit with a book under a tree, on a rock or a bench. I'll be spending plenty of time out here in nice weather.
This photo shows the Grand Army Plaza, the traditional main entrance to Prospect Park and the busiest traffic circle in Brooklyn (thank you, Wikipedia). The archway is the Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial Arch, Brooklyn's version of Paris' Arc du Triomphe.

The main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library is right near the arch above. According to BPL's website, the building was designed to look like an open book, and "the bronze gateway features fifteen different literary characters and luminaries, including Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer, and Brooklyn’s own Walt Whitman."

There's something about Brooklyn's brownstone houses that I absolutely love. Even though all of the homes are similar in appearance, they have so much more character than identical houses of the suburbs. I'd be perfectly content living in a brownstone.

This is part of Prospect Park West, the main hub of activity in my neighborhood. The street essentially serves as the border between the hip neighborhood of Park Slope and the more traditionally Italian neighborhood I live in, Windsor Terrace. It's nothing compared to 7th or 5th Avenue in the Slope, but it has lots of little delis and bodegas, a couple places to get coffee, a book shop with a cat (!!) and a few restaurants I'm excited to try.

I'm in love with this place.