NYC - Day 1

Over the next few days or weeks I will be posting some pictures from our whirlwind tour of NYC in 5 days. We took about 530 pictures. We fell in love with New York. A lot of people do. We aren't set apart that way, but with these pictures and words I have attempted to take a little piece of New York home with us. I hope, with 500+ pictures and many words to come, I have done and will do just that.

Naturally, half of the trip revolved around eateries. The first stop after checking into our hotel in the Upper East Side was the Shake Shack, supposedly New York's best cheeseburger. The Shake Shack is notorious for its lines. Of course, this was a Saturday, so we just had to deal with it. We stood in line for 55 minutes. You can see the curve of the line in the picture above. The wait was worth it. We took action shots of us biting into the burger, not ashamed of our touristy behavior at all.

The Shake Shack is in Madison Square, a beautiful area that has a little dog park in it. There are lots of benches, shade, and respite to be had here.

The Empire State Building looms over Madison Square.

The Flatiron Building on Madison Square. I can't believe how skinny the northern tip of this building is. We just stumbled across it. That happened a lot in our five days there. There are so many iconic parks, buildings, stores, hotels, etc. that you just happen upon them while you are heading somewhere else. This stretches the day out so much you can have lunch at 3:30 and dinner at 10.

Ground Zero. A lot more thoughts here, but what struck me about these pictures is how little has been done in eight years. Construction has truly begun on the new buildings to be put in there, but there is still quite a hole. The place is surrounded by fence, most of which cannot be seen through. On the most crowded street corners near the WTC site, are people preaching that 9/11 was a cover up. They yell. They quietly stand and hand out pamphlets to any interested passersby, who, oftentimes, unsuspectingly take them and discover later on that the information proposes that 9/11 was an inside job. I took several pictures of this scene and I will probably put them up in a later post.

The maze of construction at Ground Zero. The site, no matter how cynical one can be about the way parts of it have been made into a tourist site or another place for locals to sell their NYC caps and shirts, will be sobering to the visitor at some point or another. More about this later, but overall, the whole experience shuts you up and shows you beautiful and grotesque things about our existence.

We walked from Ground Zero to the Hudson (not far at all). I am facing Jersey. Not too long after this a huge cruise ship went down the Hudson. I have pictures of that, but I couldn't post all 100+ pictures from this day.

Yes, we went. We went to Times Square. I was thinking this night, "Gosh, New Yorkers must avoid this place like the plague." It was good to walk through. As you can see, that took some time. But after the walk, Times Square really settles in as just a huge testament to capitalism and crappy restaurants (Olive Garden, Ruby Tuesday, McDonald's, Red Lobster). I know I am forgetting a lot here, but you get the point.

A reminder, you should be able to click on each picture to see a larger version of it.