I MEANT IT.
The lovely New York Skyline from window of a Toyota Matrix.
Bob, his adult nephew Matt and I drove up to New Hampshire from our area (just outside of Philly) to celebrate the college graduation of another nephew. As a graduation gift, Bob and I gave him a skull. Yes, I mean that, too. The graduate was a biology-major/is a biologist and I'd found the mostly-clean skull of a whitetail doe and bleached it up for him so he could have an addition to his type-collection. For the record, he loved it. He also showed me his collection, which I was jealous of. So many cool art/painting possibilities! And just plain cool animals! I really want a domestic pig-skull now...
Anyway, our drive entailed going through New York state, and since I'd never been there, we took a detour through New York City. Unfortunately, since we had neither the time nor the money, we couldn't stop and walk around or do anything touristy, so I just did what I could with my digital camera outside the passenger windows.
This is probably the best shot I have - Times Square.
Actually, most of what I got shots of was in this area and Broadway. My camera ran out of room and I had to use Bob's - and I haven't gotten anything off of Bob's chip yet. I tried to get shots of the new WTC/that area, but as soon as I'd lined up a shot, we had to make a turn. I couldn't get any shots of the glorious bridges, either - I thought the bridges were really neat, just huge, amazing things that tell you that you're entering the city to end all cities.
Lookit all the shows we do not have the time or money to go to! There's a lot of neat advertising in New York - big signs, lighted things, and those giant wrap-skins on buildings...
Makes you want a Coke, don't it? The thing that struck me about the city was how *vertical* it was. You see, I grew up in the middle of the desert in nowhere-land Arizona. For most of my life, my world was horizontal - flat, vast country, low-slung purple and blue mountains on horizons... some hills and rocks to climb. Of course, things get vertical whenever you go into canyon-country - Oh, Salt River Canyon, how I remember almost dying driving the U-Haul through you due to us being mis-directed by Google Maps on our way out to Pensie.... I should have listened to my parents' directions, but nooo... I had to listen to a computer and go through the scary narrow-road canon with the broken cars dumped down the sides. New York is kind of like that, except with glass and the fact that you're on the bottom of the "canyon" trying to avoid the yellow cabs.
On our way out of New York City, we spotted a bumper sticker that read "Visualize world peace? Try visualizing using a turn signal!" - Very appropriate for the city, we thought.
I forget where we were here - just a shot of towering buildings and cars on the road.
All, in all, I found New York to be a chatoic, cacophanous canyon-quagmire. In the words of Matt, sitting next to me "It makes Philly look sane!" A nice place to visit and I'd like to go back there someday when I have money and can maybe see one of the Broadway shows, but I'm glad I don't live there. Some people love the frentic energy of cities... I'm definitely a country-girl.
(I was actually offered a train-trip to go into the city and walk for a day for my upcoming birthday. My answer: "I don't think we have enough money to do what I'd want to do, we can't afford to take the friends I'd like to take, so I'd rather we go finally get me this year's fishing licence and spend a day at one of the local lakes." My other answer was a " -_- The city is full of...people..." ). Yep, country-girl.
I finally saw it. Now I need to go to Tokyo and London and see those places, maybe Paris and Mt. Rushmore... a few other landmarks... (I saw the Grand Canyon when I was 9, would like to go back)... then I can die! Yay!
No comments:
Post a Comment