We Love NYC!

NYC is immense. Millions of people, thousands of restaurants, hundreds of sky scrappers, dozens of museums, make for a mind blowing, and overwhelming environment. We returned to our two favorite places, The Natural History Museum and the MET, where our expectations were superseded once again. Kim, Julian and I stayed at a hostel in the heart of Manhattan for another 3 days.

We traveled everywhere on the subway and walked for miles on the busy city pavement. We simply saw and did so many things... here are a few photos.

Strolling through Central Park

The fanciest Home Depot I had ever seen.

There was a Kandinsky exhibit at the Guggenheim.

NYC

Amanda, our well traveled friend and ex-roommate had a couch in Brooklyn for us to sleep on, where we met Ami's oldest friend, Kim for a mad week in NYC.
Kim is a nuclear-powered, graveyard shift ICU nurse, who's half cheetah, half chipmunk stamina should be researched as an inexhaustible source of energy.
Together the four of us frenetically explored Brooklyn for three days and nights.


We ventured out to the once vibrant Coney Island, we found an aging carnival on a well trodden beach. We got drenched as we walked around the rusting rides and stopped for a famous Coney Island hot dog. Traveling on a lifted part of the subway we saw the old and crowded cemetery that has serviced the area for such a long time, this was one of the few places in the city not covered in sky scrapers.


After a night out on the town, we went underground to to explore the transit museum and some of the now nonoperational subway lines. It was amazing to see the vintage of the still operational subway system; hand dug and built pre-machinery. Above ground, we came across bustling markets and hoards of amazing food. We ended up at the Brooklyn Bridge, where we were lured across by the Manhattan skyline.

Bausten and Providence

And so we began the civilized stage of our tip, trading empty roads and dark night skies for traffic and streetlights.

Leaving the lobster soaked North East, we entered Providence, Road Island, Olympia's supposed sister city in the East. Providence has a liberal college vibe on the streets, but coming from Olympia it was a giant city to us.

We enjoyed two relaxing days at our friend Freya's apartment, visiting the Harvard campus in Boston and recuperating before NYC.

As we strolled around Harvard Square in our West coast jeans and t-shits, the old East Coast culture surprised us with its fitted suits and formal dress shoes, making us feel a world away from home.

Driving out of Road Island we set the GPS for Brooklyn and left Providence; but we never left the city.

Highway after highway there was no transition from one city to the next, the buildings just got bigger and bigger and the fees at the toll bridges became outrageous.

Entering NYC by car was an adrenalin sport, {merging was an showdown where the most battle scared vehicle was victorious} but it showed us the massive scale of the super industrialized Eastern seaboard.

The amazing glass flowers at the Harvard museum. It's hard to see but all of the cases are filled with glass reproductions of plants, seeds and flowers, hand made in Germany!