A walk in the park

So here's a general overview map of the 5 boroughs of New York City:

Manhattan is #1 (Blue), the Bronx is #4 (Red), Queens #3 (Orange), Staten Island #5 (Purple) and Brooklyn is #1 (Yellow). Brooklyn is on the very tip of Long Island, and that grey across the river from Manhattan is New Jersey. Before I moved here, I had absolutely no idea how all of the boroughs fit together, or how New Jersey fit into the puzzle. 

This is a close-up map of Brooklyn and all of its neighborhoods. We live in Park Slope, near Prospect Park. Brooklyn is huge. In fact, if it were a city unto itself, instead of being a part of New York City, it would be the fourth-largest city in the world. 

The sun was shining bright today, so we decided to take a walk around Prospect Park. That's the nice thing about winter in New York. It may be cold, but it sunshines a LOT. Coming from the Pacific Northwest, I kept waiting for the rain to start. For me, November means the start of 6 months of rain. But it never came. All we've had is sunshine and snow. And frankly, that's pretty great. 

It was a perfect day for a walk, warmed by the sun, cooled by the brisk breeze. 

Families were out sledding, bikers were riding the loop all bundled up in their winter riding clothes, people were running, walking their dogs, or just having a nice walk, like us. 

We even saw a person cross-country skiing.

In the rest of the city, the sidewalks are shoveled and the roads are cleared of snow by just hours after the snowfall. But in the park, they left the snow on most of the walkways. Walking there made it really feel like it had snowed. 

We did a two hour loop around the park and by the time we got home, we were ready to curl up and watch some football in the cozy apartment. Too bad the Seahawks got stomped!

Edit: Neil just pointed out that I got my facts about Brooklyn wrong. It would be the fourth largest city in the U.S., not the world. Fourth largest in the world is now held by Sao Paulo, Brazil, with appx. 17 million people. Brooklyn only has 2.5 million. Whoops!