This post is the fourth part of a series named “New York”, in which I talk about my trip to New York city in the first week of May 2011. These posts will be loaded with pictures, I took 1050 that week!
View all posts about New York 2011
or read all about day 3!
Monday, May 2nd
This was the first normal weekday that we spent in New York and it was noticable, all the weekend-people had left. Of course it’s never not busy in New York, but it was relatively ‘quiet’. Or “Deir aar not muts piepel” as @HencosMening would say.
Looking west onto the Hudson river
We were all quite tired, because we kind of pushed our limits on saturday and sunday. Doing a lot of stuff in one day. This day, and the ones ahead, were slightly less hectic, but still packed and with all the things we done, we still didn’t see everything.. not even everything that we wanted to see.
So when we woke up, the TV’s went on (of course), and Osama was all over the news; he was dead. So we went outside to get breakfast and all the newspapers were headlining it.
Got him!
Wall Street Journal playing safe: "Reported dead"
They “nailed the bastard” according to the New York Post, and people had been gathering at Times Square and Ground Zero, in fact, they were at Firehouse Ten, where we were just the day before.
We went to the Subway (the sandwich shop, not the transportation one) and I had to teach my parents the entire concept, eventhough we have quite a lot of Subway’s ourself in the Netherlands. My dad just gave up and pointed to some egg muffin. The picture showed two different kinds and he thought he’d get both. Which he didn’t, so he ordered another one. The rest of us did get a real sub though.
Just drop the letters through a giant 'chute'
After all of that, we went to the first ‘attraction’ of that day: the Empire State Building.
Of course more metaldetectors and waiting in line for one of the elevators to get down. Which they’d stuff with people. Maxing it out! Also, you don’t know the meaning of the word ‘fast’ unless you been in these elevators.
When we got up there I instantly recognized the guarding rail, because you see it in so many photos, I just never knew they belonged to the ESB.
The view is absolutely amazing! And it beats the view from Top Of The Rock by a magnitude of.. let’s say.. 3.73!
Also the fact that there’s no glass, just a fence with holes big enough for camera’s to go through, makes it the perfect candidate for aerial photographs. There’s not much else to say about this, so here are just some photo’s:
If you happen to fly by and wanna kno where you at..
Tiny people eating tiny sandwiches and drinking from tiny cups.
Some trees. Just chillin'
How much does this remind you of GTA?
When we took the turbo jet-engine elevator back down we went to a McDonalds, so that meant free wi-fi. Checked in to some of the places I went, twitpic’d and instant messaged with my girlfriend back in the Netherlands. I ordered the “Frozen strawberry lemonade”, which is just really a slushie/Slush Puppie.
Art deco?
We then started walking to the MoMa. Or (better?) known as The Museum of Modern Art. We were all rather optimistic about this visit, especially my mother, but it was false hope.
Airplane on ESBs eye-height
The “Contemporary Art” section was, as weird as this may sound, enraging me. It made no sense, there was nothing to ‘see’ and it felt like it was really meaningless. But maybe that’s just me. I really liked the other galleries, the one with photos, the digital age gallery and the typography gallery, where I intensively searched for ‘Comic Sans’, but to no avail.
By the time the chairs were growing out of the walls, the rest of the family was starting to get bored. Thinking back, it was really a bad choice to go to this museum, we should have gone for a history museum or the National Museum of the American Indian.
Harley parked on the street
For reasons I can not remember anymore, we went to our hotel to get some rest? Drink? Choco krispies?
So when we left the hotel again, we walked underneath the Ed Sullivan theater and to find ourselves in the middle of .. Hollywood?
What we saw was a giant crossbow, a man in a black jumpsuit and camera’s. So I took out my camera too, and made some shots.
Turns out this black suited man’s name is Brian Miser or as he likes to call himself: The Human Fuse. The fact that the entire parade was parked in 53th street was no coincidence either, it was of course next to the Ed Sullivan theatre where they film The Late Show with David Letterman.
So that was quite a wake up call.. sort of.
Clean shoes at Grand Central
We then went for dinner and we chose the Planet Hollywood venue right on the Square. Well, let me tell you, this was one of the best, if not *the* best, restaurant we been to. If you strongly disagree, then I guess we made the wrong choices before.
The ambiance in this place is great, movies, props, special lightning, interior, music. They had it all.
The food was great, really big plates and the only time I had the slight feeling that “Everything is bigger in America”. Also, first time we encountered re-fills, which is totally uncommon to us; but great nonetheless :D
Why go to MOMA when you got streetart?
We actually somewhat planned to eat near Times Square, because for the evening our plan was to take the tour bus and do the night tour. The bus was quite late and we were there waiting for quite some time. First in line, so that’s nice. My little sister and I went to sit up front.. Our tour guide: someone they fished from the Apollo theatre. If Bill Cosby and Robert DeNiro would have a baby, it would look like our tour guide, except 55 years younger.
Not sure what this is.. funny with the branches though
Most of the photos turned out really crappy, because taking photos in pitch dark and while sitting atop a moving bus.. well.. do your math.
Futuristic buildings look even more futuristic at night.
It was a great tour and nice to see New York at night without having to drive or walk through the traffic yourself.
Being on a poster, like a boss.
Here are some more night pictures, but these are quite ‘horrible’. However, they *will* give you a slight impression of what it was like.
NYC at night
What my moms Canon manages to do..
Edited version of NYC at night
South Street Seaport at night
Tags: newyork2011
