A Day in the City

In these parts, "the city" means only one thing - Manhattan.  New York City.  Never mind that there's a small city right here.  We call this one, "Albany," and the other one, "the city."

I got up at 4:30 yesterday morning.  Fed the dogs once, then again at 5:45 when I left for the train station.  Left the still-sleeping chickens enough food to last for 24 hours.  Then took the train south along the Hudson River as the sun rose and the moon set.

I met my father and a friend at breakfast, and gave my father a lunch cooler full of hand-picked upstate NY elderberries.  We walked along the High Line, a park made on an abandoned elevated train line rescued from demolition.  It's so popular that famous architects are building hotels above the park and other cities are trying to duplicate it.  I think that white striped building in this picture is a Gehry building, but I'm not positive.  I used to really be into that sort of thing.

Then we separated for a few hours while I ran to an appointment.  I don't remember these bike lanes being here before.  Bike lanes are one of the best parts of Europe that I'm glad to see us adopting.

and we met up at Rockefeller Center, where the uniform of choice was leggings, or "jeggings," jean leggings.

Dad had free tickets to the observation deck at the top of Rockefeller Center.  I'd never been there before, and it was very nice.  Looking north past Central Park toward home.

Looking south past the Empire State Building.  When the twin towers were still standing, they were two extremely tall buildings at the southern tip of the island.  They would have stuck up just to the right of the Empire State Building in this picture, but farther down, at the end.

Finally I took the bus back down through Times Square back to Penn Station and home. 

I got home at midnight after a long day full of running and touristing.  The animals made it through their 18-hour stay without me swimmingly.  I used to badly want to live in this city.  My mother said once that she envisioned me as the aunt the kids visit in the city. Today was only touristy places though, and more Australian accents than I've ever heard here before, among the babel of languages I always hear here.  I'll be back, city, if only to visit!