The day I spent walking in NY September 23, 2007

Today, I had breakfast with Natasha and Murat (from Russia), and we decided to visit NY together today as our plans were the same.
We started our walk in Central Park. I didn’t really enjoyed my short walk there last week because of the weather, but today, the sky is blue, the temperature is ideal, there are a lot of people running or walking in the park, the squirels are also here… it’s just per-fect!!
In Central Park we saw the Reservoir, Alice in Wonderland, Strawberry Fields (with the memorial to John Lennon) and some other nice places.
After Central Park, we took the subway to Greenwich Village and walked around. In some streets, you do not feel you are in NY because everything is so quiet (or maybe it’s only because it’s Sunday) and the houses are smaller, older… well it’s different (look at the pictures if you don’t understand).
After Greenwich, we went to Chinatown to have lunch (at 2.30pm) and then we went to Little Italy, where we had an excellent traditional ice cream (pistachio, of course!!!). We walked in the now famous street all decorated for San Gennaro Feast.
From there, we went to Soho and its particular architecture (many of the buildings were once factories). It’s amazing to see that each area in NY has its own culture, architecture and spirit (you can also see some pictures).
Then, I sugested we could go to the Flat Iron Building and we took the subway to go there. Unfortunately, only a small part of the building was in the sun (if ever you plan to take a picture of it, don’t wait for the end of the afternoon). We had a short rest in the park across the street, where we also took pictures of tree-shaped metal sculptures (I love the light effects on it).
We then again took the subway to see Wall street before heading to South Street sea port. From Wall street, we could already see Brooklyn skyline, which looked like gold thanks to the late afternoon light.
Arriving at South Street sea port, we went to the former fish market (now, you have restaurants and bars there) and found 3 seats to admire the sunset on the Queens and Brooklyn. We stayed for quite a long time and left only at night… many, many pictures later.
My stay here couldn’t end in a better way.
… well, once back at the hotel, I saw on TV that I could wave good bye to my plans for tomorrow as Ahmadinejad (the Iranian President) was in NY and would make a speach in Columbia University tomorrow… guess what wasn’t far from the hotel and still had to see? Yep, Columbia University!!! How did you guess?

The day I was back in NY September 22, 2007

This morning, I only had a rest in Boston as I’m very tired after having visited so many places and museums. I left the hotel around 1.00pm and went to South Station to take the bus. I was lucky the 2.00pm bus wasn’t full and they let me board with my 4.00pm ticket, hoping that we won’t be stuck in the traffic jam in NY.
That’s incredible to see how the nature has changed here in only 5 days: on my way to Boston, there were only a few yellow leaves in the trees and today, they were much more numerous and there were also a lot of red ones. It was wondeful and it will certainly be just incredible next week… I’d really like to stay here and look at the trees becoming yellow and then all red!!! Instead of that, I’m going to NY and on Wednesday, I’ll be back at the office in Montpellier *noooooooo!!!!! Life is so unfair!!!*
Arriving in the Queens, I suddenly understood that it was a brilliant idea to have left Boston earlier because there was already a big traffic jam to cross the bridges to reach Manhattan.
The weather here is not very nice (I think they had rain this afternoon). At one moment, the view was amazing: the highway was quite high because it was going over a huge cemetery, and right in front of us there was New York, with a pinkish and already very low sun, and the top of the buildings were in a sort of fog or clouds. It was like a dream. In that cas, I love traffic jams… it gives you a extra moment to see the landscapes.

Then, after a long while on the road, we arrived in Chinatown, I took the subway and arrived at the hotel. It’s quite old and not so clean, but I’m there only for 2 nights then, that should be ok.