Manhattan snapshots

Our recent trip to New York was the first time I had been back there since my family moved to the United States when I was sixteen. My father had got a research post at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and we lived there for two years. In our first year in the States I finished High School in Princeton and then I went to Douglass College, Rutgers University as this was the women's college that was closest to Princeton and even though I lived on campus, I wanted to be near my family. In those heady days of 1968 however, university attendance came to seem an irrelevance, and I dropped out just before my exams.

We used to go to New York on a regular basis. My most vivid memory of going to the city was on my 18th birthday - a group of us went so that I could celebrate my birthday by drinking in a bar, as this was the custom. If the state you lived in did not allow drinking at 18, then you went to the nearest one that did. The law in New Jersey only allowed you to drink in public from the age of 21, so off to New York we went.

Our 10-day trip to New York last week was such a pleasure. We had a fantastic time and now I need to make sense of it all and record it. I took 1453 photographs so it is going to be no mean feat processing them all - the easiest way I can think of doing it is in a rather random manner, but I am sure that a pattern will emerge.

The New York Times building on 8th Avenue, just round the corner from where we were staying.

Union Square, on 14th Street

Union Square again

East Village

East Village

loved the trucks

Washington Square

so many signs....

a mural in East Village

2nd Avenue (I think), East Village

Canal Street in Chinatown

34th Street, the Empire State Building in the distance

34th Street

Macy's Department Store on 34th

Art Nouveau on 5th Avenue

detail on a column, same building

5th Avenue

corner of 5th Avenue and 38th St

got a bit obssessive about the trucks

Amish Market and Deli on 9th Avenue in the Hell's Kitchen district, very near where we stayed

detail

I love the way part of this building is wrapped in glass. 5th Avenue

5th Avenue

somewhere off Madison Avenue

The buildings are so high, that even on a sunny day like this one, the sun does not penetrate down below where the people are

tiny, tiny ants....

and glass everywhere....

and more glass

a nice Italian restaurant, cheap and cheerful with tasty food - we ate here twice. Off 9th Avenue, Hell's Kitchen.

The Episcopal Church of the Heavenly Rest on 5th Avenue and 9th.  Not only is the Neo-Gothic/Art Deco architectural style of this church interesting, but so is everything else about it: it has a woman bishop and gay priests and campaigns for civil rights.