secret garden

Taking a guided tour of any city is definitely a mixed bag, but it's usually worth schlepping off an on a bus and exposing yourself as a obvious tourist in order to see places one would never know to seek out on one's own. Case in point, one of my favorite NYC stops is a little garden adjacent to a unfinished cathedral in Harlem, a place I would have never seen had it not been for a tour company's itinerary. Even if you don't dig much on architecture, The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine is still pretty awe-inspiring, but I could spend hours taking pictures in the Biblical Garden on the cathedral's south grounds. (Of course, tour guides run a tight ship so I've never been able to spend enough time there to snap off more than a few pictures. Again, it's a mixed bag.)

This sculpture, The Peace Fountain, is the garden's impressive centerpiece......but it's the little sculptures surrounding it that are my favorite part of the garden. Each is cast in bronze using sculptures made by children, and they're full of whimsy, sweetness and light.