📍 Spot · Hidden Place New York
Central Park is 100% fake, and that's the best part
Here's a fun thing to know while you're lying on the grass in Central Park: none of this is natural. The lakes? Dug by hand. The hills? Sculpted. The rocks? Okay, the rocks were already there. But basically everything else — every tree, every "wild" meadow, every romantic winding path — was designed and built in the 1850s by about 20,000 workers, on what used to be swamps. It's not a piece of nature they saved. It's a piece of nature they built, like a 3.4-square-kilometer stage set of the countryside. The most convincing special effect in New York, running daily since 1858. And it's big. Bigger than the entire country of Monaco. There are people in this park who have never met each other. My favorite detail: Sheep Meadow, the big lawn where everyone sunbathes, had actual sheep until 1934. A shepherd and everything, right in Manhattan. The sheep are gone now, replaced by people doing yoga, which is honestly a similar energy. [Picture:Christina & Peter / Pexels (31386333)] Walk in at 72nd Street and you get the greatest hits in one loop: Strawberry Fields with the "Imagine" mosaic for John Lennon, then Bethesda Fountain and its terrace — which you've already seen in about forty movies whether you know it or not. Apparently this is one of the most-filmed places on Earth. [Picture:Ramaz Bluashvili / Pexels (7070937)]