Vanessa and me in front of the fountain in Central Park:
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Shawn and Vanessa in front of the MET. It's a bloody huge building. I'm basically standing in the middle of the intersection and you still can't see the top of the building. The width is even larger:
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Times Square at night:
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Me singing in Toys R' Us:
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Me singing again. In case you haven't already figured out, it was "Achy Breaky Heart." I actually had about a dozen people stop to listen. Kinda like watching a car accident, eh?
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That Empire State building is made completely outta LEGO:
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Times Square again. The street that splits off to the left is Broadway:
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We went back the next day to Toys R' Us to ride the ferris wheel in the building. It cost something like $2.50 US so we didn't bother. We did see a cool Mars rover built outta LEGO, though:
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Shot of the Empire State building. You'll note that it's a pretty crappy day. We didn't go up that date, but the next:
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Front shot of the Empire:
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Lobby of the Empire. We had to go by 2 guys with M4's and a canine attack unit to get in. Seemed like home
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Shawn and me in front of the public library. This was actually pretty cool. They said if they were to rebuild it with today's currency it would cost over $500 million US:
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You can't make it out very well, but where I'm heading has a bunch of cool paintings on the walls and a mural on the ceiling. Marble, fountains, old books, wood panels, stone statues, and guards were everywhere. I thought Shawn took another pic when we were in it, but he didn't ;(
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Chrysler building. It was scary in the fact that the fast food joints (ie. McDonald's) were the cheap joints to eat at. I remember that because of the sign, in case you were wondering:
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Chrysler building again. We took another shot cuz we heard that weird whoosh of gas going up that you see in the pic. If it was nerver gas, it was a shoddy formula:
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The far end of Grand Central Station. They have something like 11 subway lines. You can go everywhere on the subway. Some of the lines were really cool. One had a lighted display that showed where you were in the tunnels and what stop you were coming up on. Oddly enough, some guy asked me for directions down in the tunnels. Even more odd was that I actually knew where to direct him:
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Inside Grand Central Station. You can't see it here, but some chick had set up an agricultural pamphlet table. I, naturally, was intrigued. All the pamphlets were on farm cruelty to animals. No solution to this "cruelty" was mentioned--just an address to donate money to. Dad got a good laugh outta the pamphlets:
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One of the UN buildings. Shot was taken from some memorial wall that we were on top of. The wall had a verse on it, but didn't say where it was from (it was part of Isaiah 2:4 or Micah 4:3--apparently, they couldn't decide on which location
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The line of flags in front of both UN buildings. The guide asked us which flag was last and I actually knew (it was Zimbabwe):
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One of the meeting rooms. I got the guide p1ssed at me because he asked a rhetorical question and I answered it. He asked "Do you know what the official UN languages are?" and started to answer it right away. I cut him off and said Russian, English, Chinese, French, Middle Eastern, and Spanish. It was pretty friggin' obvious for a couple of reasons. First, those are the most common languages. Second, he explained the headphone service to us and there was a wheel in the chair's arm that let you switch your headphones to whatever language you wanted. I just answered him while clicking through the wheel. He gave me a dirty look
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Another one of the meeting rooms. They all had special purposes and, for most of them, the furniture was donated by northern European countries (ie. Denmark, Sweden, Finland), and I've forgotten their names:
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The main meeting room. I asked him what country donated this furniture. He told me that everyone did. He also said that the UN was great because it showed that the world would come together in peace and this is shown by the countries committment and willingness to pay their fees. I snorted at the last part because it was obviously wrong:
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One of the Donald Trump buildings. The other was on Wall Street:
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More of the Donald. It was huge and looked like a big pillar of black marble with gold accents:
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Your friendly neighbourhood UN piece cleaners
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A huge building in the middle of the Rockefeller Square...........I think:
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Shawn's doing a project on the Empire State building so there's gonna be a lot of them. Here's a shot from up top the next day. It's hard to make out, but there's an aircraft carrier museum with a boatload of planes in it (teehehe.........I made a pun) out in the harbour with a Concorde on it. Shawn and I ran outta money so we couldn't go see it
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Crap on the Empire. Note the yellow taxis. They're all Ford Crown Vic's. What between the cop cars and the taxis, Ford made a huge haul sales-wise in NYC. Many of the taxis have friggin' steel bars encased in thick rubber on the front and back. They look kinda like the huge trucks with moose guards. A NYC cabby is the last vehicle you wanna hit:
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Nouth Manhattan. You can see how large Central Park is. Honestly, it's about as big as downtown Toronto. We walked for almost an hour until we came to a castle. We checked the map and we weren't even 1/2 way through the park. It's big enough that it has its own police precinct building in the park:
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More of Manhattan:
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More of Manhattan. You can see the Wrought Iron building (triangle shaped) that Toronto copied on the right:
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The broadcast tower on the Empire:
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South-West Manhattan. Shawn likes to take pictures looking directly into the sun. You'll see a few more like this later:
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The Court House that Martha Stewart was in. We were there while the trial was going on. Behind us was literally a huge row of tents with all the reporters waiting on the verdict. To the left of this Court House is the Supreme Court. Shawn doesn't have any pictures, but Vanessa might. Have to get back to ya on that:
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World Trade Center. Now it's just a huge construction site. The World Financial Center (round thing) is visible in the background. You can still see the subway travelling down at the bottom every now and then:
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More of the WTC construction. There were huge, thick metal walls around the whole thing so the pictures aren't very good:
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WTC memorial:
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Some of the surrounding buildings were still heavily damaged. You can't really see it this pic, but some of them had roof to basement netting all over 'em:
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Statue of Liberty. They don't let you go up to it anymore, but it wouldn't have mattered. The last boat left at 3:30 and we got there at 3:34 due to someone's *cough*Shawn*cough* directions:
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"Close up" of the Statue of Liberty:
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A wild turkey in the middle of a restaurant in Battery Park. The last thing we expected:
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Shawn staring at the sun...........and taking a pic of the Statue of Liberty:
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The New York Stock Exchange. Note the Canadian flag on the right:
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I forgot the name, but it's important...............I swear!
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The New York Stock Exchange. Note the American flag on the right. As soon as Shawn took the first picture, a cop went up and changed the flag. We didn't know why the Canadian flag was up in the first place, but it was even weirder that the cop changed the flag after they saw us taking pics of it. They're were cops and SWAT teams all over. They had metal fences and concrete barricades in front of the whole building. Thus, no stock floor pics
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You'll know as soon as you click:
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Brooklyn Bridge in the foreground, Manhattan one in the back. This was taking from Pier 17 (a huge restaurant complex that was about 7 stories high on the wharf):
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The Brooklyn Bridge and a barge full of garbage. We thought it was fitting for NYC:
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The Empire at night:
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Macy's department store. Vanessa thought it was important because they always sponsor the parade. It had super old escalators in it--they were made outta wood for pete's sake:
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Times Square again at night. I didn't get to see Mamma Mia, but I did get to see Stomp. Pretty cool play. I got crushed against the wall sitting beside Shawn, but they had it worse crampage-wise. Long live the people under 6' !
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The Department of Defence recruitment center in Times Square. Must be there for New Year's Eve when you'll do just about any dare:
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Our apartment view. It was cheap for a reason. The water towers show that the city was never initially designed for that large a number of people:
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Empire:
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Statue of Liberty from the Empire:
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Chrysler building, Donald Trump building, and UN from...............you guessed it...............the Empire:
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I don't know why Shawn took 2 pictures of the Empire's transmitter..........phalic obsession? The light effects are cool, though:
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Even I'm sick of these Empire shots:
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No more Empire after this one.................for now
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Well, no more after this one:
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This was for a project, remember?
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Central Park. They've got some friggin' big rocks:
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You can't see it very well, but the land on the right is an island. They're were footprints leading out from our edge to the island and then they stopped. You could see that there was a huge hole that had been refrozen (the ice was a different colour). Spring-time might bring some interesting results to the shore. At least the fish had food for the winter, eh?
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The Central Park reservoir:
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The Museum of Natural History. Puts our ROM to shame:
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Dinosaur bones in the lobby of the MONH:
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Hard to make out, but it's a herd of life-size elephants. You can see the display boths around the edges. They had hundreds of 'em:
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Life-size blue whale in the aquatic center:
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Shawn's girlfriend hates spiders. Thus, he took this picture:
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The other dinosaur in the lobby:
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The Empire State building from the bus in New Jersey. I swear that Jersey makes garbage dumps look clean. It's got abandonned factories, trash everywhere, oil-infused water, and industrial buildings everywhere. No wonder nobody goes to the Devils' games:
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If I have time, I'll scan in Vanessa's sometime. I forgot my camera at home so I couldn't take any pics. Anyhoo, that was NYC in a nutshell.
