New York

I am totally and utterly wowed by New York.  I hadn't expected to like it as much as I do at all!  I hadn't realised just how many times I have seen New York portrayed in films and media and consequently without knowing it I had a powerful idea of what New York ought to be - and it is just so much more.  It has exceeded my every expectation.  The traffic is horrendous and yes the taxis are yellow and yes they do seem to drive like mad people.  The buildings are HUGE!  I walked down past Wall Street - that was exciting, and the buildings just tower over you in such a way that makes you feel very small.  The Empire State building doesn't stand out as being any taller than anything else as a pedestrian - but you know, its the Empire State Building, so I went up - and it is just incredible! The view from the top is simply awesome. The other sky scrapers look like toys laid out below, and you get such a sense of how everything is crammed on to this tiny piece of land surrounded by water.  The old buildings really do have metal fire escapes with bits to pull down, just like in the films, and the vents in the ground really do steam, and the metro really is as clattery and noisy as in those films where some poor hero is in a tiny dingy flat and keeps getting woken up by them (Why are they so much worse than the tube?)  Every day I do something and I am just in awe of the fact I am really here - really experiencing it and that it is just so much like how I imagined it without even knowing it.

What have I done - it feels like everything!  I get back in the evenings and I am too tired to even get through the whole days activities in my paper journal, let alone do anything else!  I took the ferry to see the Statue of Liberty - that was cool, such an icon, and I really got to stand in front of it.  It really is there!  The view from the ferry - just like the bit in Monty Python, where the London Accountants become pirates and sail the building to Wall Street, to attack, with filing cabinet cannons the bright young things in high finance. 

I went to the museum about immigrants to New York on Ellis Island (the place where they all passed through) That was amazing, very interesting, and felt like the next chapter as it were, because I went to the same museum in Hamburg, only there it was all about the emigrating Europeans going to New York.  I saw some of the Macy's Day Parade as I arrived.  (Not fun trying to push laden bicycle through crowds).  I have wandered around Central Park which is beautiful, and smells like autumn leaves.  I enjoyed the Metropolitan Museum of Art - and hope to go back and even then I wont have done it justice.  I walked down Broadway and saw Billy Elliot at the Imperial Theatre.  I ate dinner in Little Italy outside on the street because it has been so warm, and strolled through China Town, Soho and Greenwich Village.  I walked down fifth avenue and window shopped - that was just wow upon wow!  Overnight, as if by magic, all the shops have got their Christmas things out, and the window displays are truly something to behold!  I went to the Toy Shop in 'Big' and saw the giant piano.  I wandered around Tiffany's and funnily enough only liked the necklaces in five figures and didn't care so much for those with only three!

View from the Empire State Building

I am sure some of you are reading this and thinking, what? Our Jenny, the country bumpkin, and I am, I admit, surprised that I am enjoying it this much!  My reason for coming to New York in the first place was slightly random, in true Jenny style: I wished to see Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.
http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=79766

I had studied it ten years ago, and despite the fact I don't particularly like the picture (I wouldn't want it on my wall at home) I was totally fascinated.  I love Picasso's pictures (not the very cubist ones though) and enjoy the way they challenge me, I always feel that if I were just a bit cleverer I would get them, like I am on the threshold of understanding, and have a tantalising glimpse but never full comprehension.  I enjoy the way that they are both ugly and beautiful at the same time, perfect and wrong - they are so contradictory, at least the abstracts are.  His realistic works I like because they have such a profound sense of emotion.  Anyway, enough of my waffle.  Les Demoselles was great!  I stood and I stared for maybe half an hour!  It completely exceeded my expectations, its huge, bold, striking, life size, and textured in ways that one just cant comprehend without seeing the work in the flesh.  Thank you Picasso, for bringing me to New York, and not letting me down!  (Just got to go to Spain now!)

I have done so much more that this, but there is only so much you want to read I guess, so I will leave off now! (I am disobeying all writing for the Internet rules already!)

They have wooden escalators in Macy's - the worlds biggest store!