Well,
Im home 3 days already, but noa and her mom just arrived today. i got in roughly midnight on tuesday, got into bed around 1am, and woke up at 6:30 to go to work, and i was teaching a photography class that day, which actually went over pretty well.
i was mostly recovering and cooking and playing with ginger these last few nights, but i managed to also upload my photos, pick them, and i got them edited and uploaded tonight. so I’m ready to blog about them now.
I think the best line of attack is probably to split the post into one for each day. in total there are something like 150 photos that i favorited. probably not all of them are blog worthy, but if i split that up into 4, its not too bad.
Alright, lets see, where to start. we got in early friday morning into JFK after a redeye. i think i already commented that we did not get much sleep. i certainly got more than noa did. we had booked a taxi service to take us to West New york, which is in new jersey, right across the hudson river from NYC. at 6:30 in the morning there was already a surprising amount of traffic, and we had to drive right thru town to get to new jersey, which took us about an hour. we arrived before noa’s parents, who had also landed at a similar time but at a different airport, and who were driving to meet us. so thats where the last blog post about us having tea outside of the starbucks left you.
So for this trip we were 5, noa, her parents, one of her sisters, and myself. noa’s mom found the place we were staying at on airbnb i believe, and it was an excellent choice. huge spacious apartment, 2 bedrooms and bathrooms, and lots of room. obviously we aren’t spending a lot of time in the apartment, but its nice to have a kitchen and such. incidentally, we also found out it was really nice to stay outside of the city in the evenings, where the pace is a little slower, and not so crowded. all in all it was an excellent choice.
here is a view of the apartment complex.
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once we got settled for a bit, off we went into the city. as it was friday, noa’s dad was still working that day, so it was just the 4 of us that ventured into the city. we were told we can either take a bus or a ferry into the city, so we decided to try the ferry, and off we went.
glimpse of the city
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we were down on the bank of the river, and there was this bluff behind this, densely treed, with this cool building in amongst it.
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i loved how this pathway ended
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so we got to the ferry, and here it is arriving.
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as it turns out, we loved taking the ferry. it ran every 20 min, it was fun, and you got to see the city from it. and it was fast! also, it was only a 5 min walk from the apartment, and dumped us right into NYC. overall i just loved taking it. if you couldn’t tell already.
noa and her sister
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this is us leaving the ferry dock, looking back at where we were staying
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and you turn around, and you get this!
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and much to my surprise, we passed this, which had just arrived in new york.
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The space shuttle!!! pretty cool. it wasn’t open yet, and over the course of a few days they put a giant tarp around it. but i was pretty lucky to get these few shots.
and a view with cruise ships and the city
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and then we were off the shuttle, and walking into town.
and you forget how crazy it can be. sign assault!
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and look whats nestled into a little corner here! a tim hortons. we didn’t go in, but kinda crazy to see one outside of canada.
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by this point we were starving, so we ducked into an old diner, and had some delicious food. i had a large pastrami sandwich. and this picture frame was in the restaurant.
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talking of food, there was a lot this trip. a lot. we came armed with a list, and we tried to hit as many places as we could. i asked noa to keep notes on where and what we ate, and we took mostly iPhone pictures of that. so i think ill save that for a totally separate blog post.
after lunch, we wandered out to times square
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as you have perhaps surmised by now, it was a really nice day. the weather while i was there was superb, hot enough to need to wear shorts, and cool in the evenings. they day i left apparently the weather hit mid 30’s, which is kinda warm. but i had great weather. i love wearing shorts.
i liked this picture
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So then one of noa’s birthday gifts was ti see the broadway play “the book of mormon”. we booked the tickets months and months beforehand, and only had 1 time when we could go see it. and that time happened to be at 2pm the day we arrived. so, after wandering around the city for a little while, we got to the theatre with plenty of time.
here is the theatre
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and the line to get in
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and here is inside the theatre, before the show started.
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Personally, i really loved the show. i grew up with south park, and their sense of humour, and this was right along that alley. it was a super fun, action packed show, with lots of great laughs. I’m not going to review a Broadway show, thats not really my schtick, but ill be happy to talk to anyone about it if they want. all ill say is i thoroughly enjoyed myself.
from there, we walked around to hit some bakery’s on noa’s list, see some more of the city, and head back. so lets see some of those pictures.
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one of the good looking bakeries.
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i thought this was quite striking of a shot.
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30 rock!
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even the trees around 30 rock are classy!
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lots of tall buildings around
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i think this is my favourite picture of the trip. the lighting was amazing.
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i loved this.
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and more of times square
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finally we met up with noa’s sister again (she didn’t watch the play) and got back onto the ferry home.
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the lovely ladies
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another shot of the shuttle
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and good night to the city for today, the view on our walk back to the apartment
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PHEW! day one was exhausting. I hope you were able to stick with all of day one, these posts have been long awaited for by people, so I’m glad to finally get started on them.
more soon.