Welcome To New York

It's two years since visiting New York. My visit coincided with the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. In the five years until visiting the site of the towers, every day those indelible images of the 'planes disappearing into history haunted me. If that did that to me who only heard the events live, I will never understand how it felt to be either in New York or in those fateful buildings on the day. 

By visiting, the terror aspect for me from that day was diminished. 

Here are some pictures, some sombre and some less so from a couple of great days in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

For this post, commentary is above the pictures.

We took the subway south to the pier, to visit the Staten Island Ferry on the 11th. After taking some nice views of Manhattan, we sailed back and walked north. When we seemingly ran into the entire world's news crews. I took the opportunity to stand by one of the remaining items that were beamed around the world from the lenses of Jules and Gedeon Naudet.

Here's a fat me looking away from Manhattan on Staten Island.

Atmospheric skyline shot. 

A view from the Staten Island Ferry of both Brooklyn (foreground) and George Washington bridges.

On Liberty Island, with helpful accidental picture of the hole in the skyline at the bottom right.

Times Square, at night.

The last remaining above ground bit of the WTC complex, known as the "Survivors Staircase". This was moved in March 2008.

Nice shot of a street.

Street signs for the easily confused...

And the view from the gallery...
Inside Grand Central Station
Looking South towards downtown, with Liberty Island and Ellis Island on the right.

And living a bit of a childish dream, outside the Ghostbusters firehouse!

Welcome to Birmingham, 5

Further in this recurring series, more shots that make Birmingham and its environs look attractive and occasionally sexy.

Firstly, the view looking towards Wolverhampton from Tipton’s Owen Street train station. Lovely clouds.

Here, have some Birmingham Council House action.

Late night after visiting Subside, the Council House in profile, but centre stage is ( I think) Joseph Priestly. And some rain for atmosphere. And some flowers.

Lastly, the views from Tyseley station bridge looking towards the city centre. Having visited New York, I can say that this looks similar to the approach to Manhattan Island from New Jersey. Just. If you squint a bit. It was dark when I got to New York, after all.

Theft from Flickr

I am confusingly pleased to mention that I have discovered a way to ‘archive for personal reasons’ photos uploaded to Flickr. I’m sure it’s not just me that knows how to do this, but still. I spent a surprisingly short time downloading for personal archiving reasons some (68!) approval shots for one of my obscure TV crushes. Just to prove that it could be done, of course.

Fishing For Cats 3

‘Meow’ from a temporary guest.

Tennis

I picked up a following the exertions from the athletics the other week, I picked up a tennis racquet for the first time since leaving the warehouse. Now my bro and I have played two truncated sets over two weekends, and have completely wrecked ourselves. We have a lot of respect for tennis players who make it look easy and have more fitness than it first appears. My groin didn’t recover for days.

So extra kudos to Andy Murray in New York after beating the world number one Rafael Nadal to get to the final against...the best male tennis player in recent times, Roger Federer.

British people need to learn that there's more to tennis than two weeks at Wimbledon!

Woktastic

A few words of thanks for Woktastic who offered me some free sushi outside of their new restaurant in Paradise Forum (Birmingham’s Central Library). I have been keen to try some sushi and was excited to try some for free. Unfortunately, it was soaking in vinegar. I am grateful for the opportunity to try something new, so I’m more than happy to drop a free plug for their restaurant and website. Harigato!