NYC - Day 3 - Part 3

I didn't know the location of Apple's NYC flagship store. We just sort of stumbled upon it walking up 5th Avenue. I am glad we did. It's design is as beautiful as its machines. This is the entrance. You walk into the glass box, take a frosted-glass spiral staircase down and you are in the store, a giant one room basement filled with mostly tourists checking their email on computers and iPhones and Europeans buying all the Apple products they can get their hands on before flying home.

The aforementioned frosted-glass spiral staircase, which, by the way, was creepy to walk down because the steps are transparent.

At the bottom of the store, looking up at, I believe, one of Trump's Towers.

Next door to the Apple store is FAO Schwarz. We had to go in. I was here, once before, when the guards outside were my same height. They ran away as I approached, I could have easily carried Chewie here out of the store with me, they were so afraid, but we just opted for a picture and checked out.

In the Subway, waiting for a train to Rockefeller Plaza.

You might know this as the statue right in front of the ice rink at 30 Rock that you occasionally see in movies or parting shots of national newscasts. I used to know it that way, but now it's something real, a statue lit up during all hours of the night with pillars of water surrounding it. I know the buildings which surround it. I know the noise it makes and that the height of the water changes every few minutes. I enjoy this about traveling. There are places, famous works of art, streets, buildings, etc. that have been simulated so much in movies, books, pictures, articles, and paintings that you forget they actually exist somewhere outside all the simulation and artifice. When you come face to face with them it is refreshing and real. For me, this stirs the soul more than the best written descriptions or images ever could.

Anyhow, in the warmer months, it overlooks diners at a couple different restaurants. We would eat at one of them on our last night there. It was good but overpriced, even for NYC standards.

I've written on this blog about my dislike of the Today Show, but just thought I would put a picture up. This studio is so small. They make it look so much bigger on television.