Mid-March in Manhattan

I'm back and am happy to report that we all had a wonderful time in New York.  Turns out New York is my Mom's second favourite city (after Amsterdam) - who knew?  
Given that New York is a little further south and closer to the ocean, spring is slightly further ahead there.  So although most of Central Park looked like this,

if you looked closely you could see some spring flowers blooming.  Do you know how exciting that is for someone from frozen snowy Toronto.

The weather wasn't very warm and we actually got snow on our second to last day.  I was just happy it wasn't rain as a little snow is a lot easier to deal with than getting wet with rain - and the snow was so pretty in Central Park. 

Early spring is a funny time of contrasts with spring flowers for sale in outdoor shops

and bouquets of spring blossoms in the Metropolitan Museum of Art

along with skating rinks in Central Park still being used.

It was St. Patrick's Day when we were in New York.  People were decked out in green hats and necklaces,

and bleachers were set up along 5th Avenue for the St. Patrick's Day parade,

and rows of buses lined side streets to drive the parade participants home.

And we saw a glimpse of the parade itself (from a window at the Met as we were more interested in seeing the museum than the parade).

We enjoyed the flowers and St. Patrick's day fun and didn't let any mere snowflakes get in our way of us enjoying ourselves - including eating street vendor food in the snow on the steps of the Met.

I'm sorting through the loads of photos I took and will have some more posts soon.  I love the freedom and creativity that using a digital camera allows so I can take endless amounts of photos (and I do), but it sure does make a big editing job when you come home.