Cloud Envy: Minibreak to NYC

This past weekend we took a trip to New York City, with Jason's friend Florian, who works with him at NRC. Jason and Florian had never been, and it was only the 2nd trip for Katy. Cate and Robert were in town, and we were very grateful for the time they spent visiting with us! It was a great trip. Took the bus up Friday, stayed in Manhattan and toured around till Monday morning. We covered a lot of ground for a few days: Empire State, Times Square, Wall St, Broadway show, Ground Zero, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Central Park, Brooklyn Bridge, City Library, Central Station... but of course there is still more to see, so we'll have to make it back again! Have to say that as cool a city NYC was to visit, don't mind being back home & having some breathing space :) Enjoy the pics!

Luckily, Cate & Robert were there to show us how to get around, as the scale of the city is a little overwhelming at first. We spent a lot of time on the subway and walking the first 1.5 days, but the last 1.5 days laziness settled in (man, our feet hurt from all that walking!) and we began taking cabs. The NYC subway was a lot more efficient & less expensive than DC's, though not nearly as grand looking.. I say function is more important though & Metro should take some notes. I think the longest wait we had for a train was 5 min, and most of the time it was much shorter than that. Not to mention at about 1/3 the cost.

Went to the Met on Friday evening to see an awesome Picasso exhibit, & they had a strange bamboo sculpture on the roof that was being built to look like a wave. Nice views of the city up there, not to mention the interesting art.

Our first morning, Robert & Cate treated us to a breakfast picnic on Central Park. It was one of our favorite parts of the visit - delicious pastries, bagels, & coffee, great company & people watching, and the weather was beautiful (we lucked out the entire weekend).

We walked across Brooklyn Bridge, which was architecturally very cool, and gave us great views of the South Manhattan skyline.

Couple of views from top of the Empire State Building. Jason didn't go up, doesn't like being so high in the open air. It was windy, but beautiful. 1st pic looking northeast, 2nd pic looking south. The latter skyline looks much different than last time I was there... hard to believe the Twin Towers were twice as high as any buildings you see there in South Manhattan, even taller than the Empire State.

Though Jason didn't join us on the roof, he did join for a couple beers afterwards at a decent brewery.

We took a boat tour to see the city from the water, which took us close to the Statue of Liberty (though we didn't actually make it to the island to see her). We were very impressed w/ the statue up close, seeing it from afar didn't do it justice. Also got a some nice pics showing how tall the Empire State Building is relative to its surroundings.

Times Square looked cool both in the day & night. It was the busiest place in the city we experienced though, good luck trying to navigate that section of town in a hurry!