Wanderer Photography

This is the last part of our New York trip. On a partially cloudy day, we started off from West side of Manhattan on a boat trip to take us around the bay and Manhattan.

It was pretty interesting and the views were of parts of the city where we could not reach (at least easily).

While we have had a view of Lower Manhattan when we went to Liberty Island, we did not have a view of the East Side. Here, the Brooklyn bridge and the One World Trade Center in the background.

After the boat trip, we took a stroll around the city, in particular, near the new One World Trade Center building that was just being finished.

And we walked around the place where the twin WTC towers used to be and enjoyed an icecream in the park just outside, on the shore, facing New Jersey.

Walking a bit more through the city – there was one building that I really wanted to see:

Yes, this is the “Friends” building. This is featured in the TV-show Friends as the place where Monica & the rest of the friends live. It’s not much, but I liked that show quite a lot, so it is a landmark for me.

We walked a bit more through the city and got to Central Station – I was expecting it to be more of a landmark. Instead, it is pretty covered by the tall skyscrapers just outside the building. The paintings of the ceiling show constellations and give a nice pleasant tone to the building. Unfortunately, not so nice were the officers that got their focus on me and suddenly really close to me as I was setting up my camera and tripod. It was all good, “sportsmanlike” conduct.

At some point, we also caught the sunset on the streets of the city. It is really amazing how many advantages a grid system has. Besides the obvious traffic and purely organized nature (and symmetrical and mathematical and deductive – you can find out where you are based on just numbers), if you are facing West, you are going to be treated by some lovely sunsets.

New York is a city of mixed feelings for me. On the one hand, it’s a big city, so there’s always something to do and you can easily “lose yourself” in the city and meet new people. On the other hand, it’s a big city – so it comes with everything that a big city comes with: shady areas and people, self-centered people, disorganization, pollution, crowded places, bad transportation (although better than expected) and many others that are also reasons I don’t like the city where I was born.

This ends my trip around the US from last summer. Now it’s time for more adventures.

Over and out,

/cd