new york city, new york

new york city! the only place i've ever been that is worthy of the title 'city' and where the place itself is the biggest attraction. this is the empire state building. it is over 100 stories tall and i had to take this photo as 4 shots and put it together. check out the curving distortion on the buildings on either side because of the camera lense.

manhattan has the easiest street naming. running east/west they are called 1st street, 2nd street, 3rd street etc up to 220th street. if you are going from 100th street to 20th street you are going 'downtown' because the street numbers run down, similarly for 'uptown'. running north/south they are called 1st avenue, 2nd avenue up to 11th avenue, though avenues have other names (amsterdam, west end, park etc). broadway is one of the few special that does a bit of weaving. about where broadway finishes on the left of the above picture the streets are more random like they are in most cities. this is where the city first grew and in fact this is where wall st is and wall street is named as such because it used to be where a wall was to stop invaders.

and this is the view from the empire state south down fifth ave towards the financial district. the biggest skyscrapers are the twin towers of the world trade centre. in this picture on the water to the right is the statue of liberty but from this distance you can barely see it.

this is looking down into central manhattan. skyscrapers like this in every direction for quite awhile.

this is the view looking north from the empire state. you can just make out the start of central park.

and here is statue of liberty out on liberty island. we had to wait to see it though because george w bush was having a birthday party nearby and no ferries were allowed to run.

here is times square where the sides of buildings have been turned into electronic billboards

here is me and a squirrel in central park though hopefully it is obvious these are not taken to the same scale

here is an average street sign. the one way signs, traffic lights, walk/don't walk look just like they do in seasame street. i think i now know where it is filmed!

fans of seinfeld might recognise this place. it looks completely different on the inside and the don't even have a big salad! (like on the show)

others things to looks at!
next stop, washington
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