14.6.09 Puerto Rican Day Parade

14.06.2009

Puerto Rican Day Parade

For this Sunday the school organized a visit to the Brooklyn Bridge Flea Market. It was a small flea market, that was not really worth the long way we had. They had a few old things, many things you will never need and some dresses. Interesting was just one stand: They had very old postcards from the 1930s till 1960s. You could see the old New York, but also many other things. The interesting thing about them was the message on the back side of the postcards. It was like what we would send by E-Mail today, e.g. "Meet me next Friday at ...".
But we did not stay there for long and went (with David from Spain and Corina from Switzerland) to the Fifth Avenue, where the Puerto Rican Day Parade took place. It is one of the biggest parades of New York, I only know the numbers of the last years: more than 80.000 Participants and close to 3 million spectators. It was really cool, because there were many trucks with live Reggaeton music and many dancing people. Nearly Everyone had the flag of Puerto Rico (so i bought one for a Dollar) and were dressed in white, red and blue, the colors of the flag. Later that day, the Puerto Ricans were in the subway and on the streets celebrating and many cars were decorated with the flag of Puerto Rico.
After that, we went to Roosevelt Island, which is a long but narrow island in the East River between Manhattan and Queens. You had to go there by tramway, which was not very easy for me, but I did it, and it was not as bad as I imagined. The island itself is nothing very special, but there is a great view to the skyline of Manhattan, especially to the United Nations Headquarter. We stayed on the island some time to relax and then walked to the Central Park for visiting the Central Park Zoo, but it was closed at the time we arrived. So we went home to prepare for the test tomorrow.