New York City II

Soon after we arrived in NYC, we ate at a little corner eatery (note wok light fixtures) about the size of my living room and watched people walking by. 

Everyone seemed to be in such a hurry. Van told me if I needed to stop for something, to move off to the side or I'd get run over by pedestrians. 

We walked around to all the familiar sites. This is a picture of us not skating at Rockefeller Plaza. It didn't seem as big of an area as I thought it would be, but I think the tall buildings in NYC skewed our perspective of size. 

We saw the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Plaza. This year it was decorated with a scaffolding theme. 

 We walked over to Wall Street to see the NY Stock Exchange.

Van said it was a bear market that day.

That was the part of NYC that felt most like what I imagined NYC would be. The streets were dark and narrow where towering buildings took up most every square foot of space and crowded out the sun. 

The buildings framed the beautiful old Gothic style church at the end of the street.

Wish we'd had time to look at the old headstones in the cemetery. Ness told me they saw some very familiar names on the markers. 

Look how thin some of the markers were. It's a wonder they're still standing.

The stories they could tell…

We walked around to see some very recognizable sites: One World Trade Center,

the United Nations where Van has worked most every September except when he was stationed overseas, and the hundreds of flags representing the different countries.

And I'm not sure what this beautiful old building was near the NY Stock Exchange building, but it had a statue of George Washington out front.

I caught this fellow working hard in the garment district.

We packed a lot into the two and a half days we were there. I have no idea how many miles we walked, but it put blisters on the bottoms of my feet, and I wore comfortable shoes the whole time. It'd be nice to go back and take it a little slower… stopping to read the headstones… finding out what George Washington was greeting everyone for… eating a hotdog from a street vendor. 

But what we were able to experience in that short time was great.