Coney Island Baby!

The weather was gorgeous this weekend so we decided to go out on an adventure. We have a season pass to the Bronx Zoo which also allows us free admittance to the NY Aquarium on Coney Island. We didn\’t know much about Coney Island but it was only a 25 mile drive so definitely worth checking out.

We started at the NY Aquarium which is right off the boardwalk. A bunch of the exhibits are outside and then you can go under the sea cliffs and check out the sea creatures from below. We saw a ginormous sting ray, sharks, turtles, sea otters, and penguins. We got a fly-by from this little fellow.

There were more exhibits inside with a special area for jelly fish. Here\’s a picture of my guys through the jelly fish tank.

After the aquarium, we headed out to the boardwalk to see the sites…and did we ever. Don described Coney Island as \”Venice Beach meets The Soprano\’s\”. The people watching was fantastic. In the upper left hand corner of the collage you see the \”Shoot the Freak\”. It\’s a paint ball shooting galley with live human targets. We were disappointed that it was closed.

Funny enough as we were walking by Shoot the Freak, there seemed to be a photo shoot in progress — a different version of \’Shoot the Freak\’. You can tell it\’s a pro, because there is a women holding a reflector on the right.

When you looked the other way it was a beautiful beach scene.

The boardwalk runs a couple of miles from Coney Island down to Brighton Beach. It\’s like walking from NJ to Russia in one short mile. Brighton Beach is also known as \”Little Odessa\” as many of the residents originate from Odessa in the Ukraine. As we walked down the boardwalk, the language gradually turned from english to russian. We checked out a couple of restaurants and the menus were in both russian and english. It was a fascinating place.

To get to Coney Island,we crossed over the Verrazano Bridge. Here are two shots of the bridge — one on the way there and one on the way home.