Jacob Riis Park...

On Saturday morning(ish) we went on a little adventure to the beach. We wanted to go somewhere other than Coney Island for a change, so we ventured to Queens and went to Jacob Riis Park.

It took about 90 minutes and we had to take two buses to get there, but it was great fun - far more interesting that getting the subway, the buses went through bits of Brooklyn that we'd not seen before and probably never would have seen otherwise.

I've only just found out that Jacob Riis is actually in Queens, I always thought Queens was above Brooklyn, and Jacob Riis is below Coney Island, but it turns out Queens is pretty big!

The beach was lovely, it was busy but not too busy and it was quieter than Coney Island, but the area was no where near as interesting to explore as Coney Island. There's an old baths houses on the waterfront, which I thought had been renovated but it was all shut up. There was also a lovely old clock from Jacob Riis's hayday (not sure when that was though...?).

Unlike Coney Island, there aren't many places to get yummy food at Jacob Riis, but we managed to sniff out a buger stand so all was not lost - and we had a little icecream just before we went back too.

There seemed to be a lot of action up in the air on Saturday, there must have been 4 or 5 different planes flying past, all with different banners trailing behind them, there was also some advertising in the sky clouds - just like when we were in Las Vegas and they were writing in the sky using puffs of cloud.

A police helicopter was flying backwards and forwards throughout the afternoon, at one point it came really low and close to the beach, all the umbrellas were flicked out of the sand by the wind and people were frantically chasing after their massive parasols. I'm not sure if the police were looking for someone or not...
There were also a lot of rather bold seaguls who were dive-bombing picnics that had been left unattended momentarily, it reminded me of being in Jersey and hearing the seagulls every morning... pesky birds.

It was a rather splendid day at the seaside, a very relaxing Saturday in the sun (and we didn't get sunburnt this time... well, not as much anyway!). There's a few beaches near Jacob Riis, they're all part of the Rockaways, so next time it's a lovely weekend I think we might go and explore some of the other beaches - there's one called Breezy Point which sounds rather nice.