Bright Lights, Big City

New York, New York!

The night-time view onto mid-town Manhattan: the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, the UN (and more), from Nathalie's apartment, where she was kind enough to let me stay for a couple of nights

Times Square on a rainy July day

The Statue of Liberty, flanked by the New Jersey skyline... not quite as imposing as the New York skyline

The iconic Brooklyn Bridge shot!

The rainy day over Times Square eventually turned into a coloful sunset over Lower Manhattan

I walked back and forth across the Brooklyn Bridge, then took some more pictures

I went to see the new Yankee Stadium, it just so happened to be on the day that George Steinbrenner, the long-time owner, had passed away - a small memorial out front

The Statue of Liberty

I think this was my fourth or fifth time in New York, but it occurred to me that I'd never actually been to see the Statue of Liberty before, so I made sure to make my way down to Battery Park and towards the statue this time. Taking the ferry to Liberty Island itself was expensive and entailed an hour+ wait. Taking the Staten Island Ferry, which goes right by the Statue, was free and had no wait, plus the huge orange ships were pretty cool, so I followed my aunt's advice and did a commuter drive-by visit to the Statue. Liberty and Ellis Islands get saved for next time!

I met Michelle at Lombardi's Pizza

We were each waiting for a 'table for one,' and decided we'd seem less pathetic if we just got a table for two. Besides, the pizzas are rather sizeable - Lombardi's claims to be the original pizzeria and is a well-established tourist haunt, as the place had been recommended by Jamie, all the way back in London... Somebody else had suggested Lombardi's to Michelle too - she's an interesting girl: had just graduated from Texas A&M University and is at the moment doing an 'Eight Jobs in Eight Weeks' program, where, you guessed it, you work eight different jobs in eight weeks, in eight different cities. Writing a blog and everything and presumably figuring out what you want to do with your life now that college is over, and you are supposedly about to become responsible. She now has a video of me on the blog going on about how you should just travel instead of becoming responsible, but I can't possibly imagine that I sound particularly coherent, so I'll leave finding that blog as an exercise for the reader...

And then I went to see Wicked

I kept hearing about how good the show was, but had missed it when it was playing in Seattle (and then again in London), so I was happy to catch the permanent production on Broadway. The show was, indeed, great, but this sign you see as you are exiting the Gershwin Theater struck home: You are now Leaving Oz. Reality Straight Ahead. Getting back to Seattle and facing reality again is looming closer and closer!