Steak, my feet feel like... tenderized Steak!
We've walked almost everywhere, rather than try to mess with figuring out busses and the subway and all that--and we like the sightseeing that walking allows us.
The first day we checked into our hotel and went for a short walk--around 120 blocks. I dunno how much that works out to in real distances, though. We went out to a comedy show, which was pretty good.
The second day, we decided that we wanted to go to the Guggenheim Museum of Art. On the way there, we stopped at Tiffany's where I bought my wife a gorgeous pendant. We also checked out the a huge furniture and homewear store and F.A.O. Schwartz (an awesome toy store). There was a Latin American pride parade going (which rocked... mmm. Latinas lindas.
). We followed it up Fifth Avenue for a good long way until we had to detour around an area that was cordoned off. Its about 35 blocks from our hotel to the Guggenheim so we were kinda weary when we got there. We spent some time in there looking around and walked back through Central Park (gorgeous).
Yesterday, we went to the Columbus Day Parade (which in New York seems to be like an Italian American pride parade). We ended up walking around downtown, zigzagging all over the place to take photos, and eat at Grand Central Station. Then we headed back to the hotel to get dinner and prepare for going to see Chicago in the theatre district. Chicago was amazing. I thought the movie was excellent, but the stage show just blew it away.
Today, we went to Madame Tousaud's Wax Museum and we got pictures of me chocking George W. Bush and Bill Gates and giving Lady Diana, Jennifer Lopez and the sublime Salma Hayek (the sexiest woman to ever appear on the big screen) kisses. Oh and I got a great picture of Madonna's bottom.
Following that we took a long walk over to the pier where we boarded a boat for a three hour cruise all the way around Manhattan. The financial district look so wrong without the Trade Center towers, but the rest was gorgeous. From there we walked to the Empire State Building. There were way too many tourists (lots of french and germans, chain smoking cigarettes. foul). The whole ESB was a total loss. From there we ducked in and out of various stores for a couple more hours and finally worked our way back to our hotel by way of Time Square.
All in all, I've blown nine rolls of film on our old Pentax SLR (old like old as you Steak. Well, nearly.
) and a disposable camera (needed a flash inside Madame Tousaud's) and two mini-DV tapes. I don't know how well some of those pics are going to come out though. This Pentax is a manual focus, I've got no flash, nor do I have a tripod. Inside places like the Chrysler Building, the camera wants to do long (~1/30th-1/15th of a second exposures) and I don't trust myself to have held the cam steady. Also, I'm limited to a single 28-80 lens, so no nice tight close ups, no long long shots, no wide angle panoramas. This makes me sad.
Finally, as I right this, I am, for the first time ever, catching an episode of Cowboy Bebop and avoiding sleep. The show gets big props for the opening sequence, both for the music ("Tank", I think) and the visuals. On the other hand, the actual show seems to leave something to be desired. Not bad, just not 'great'.
Now I go to bed. G'night folks.
