NYC Update

We've been pretty busy. It's been a mix of walks featuring interesting things about the history, culture and architecture of the city, plus visits to museums and galleries. The weather has remained pretty good, but varying between really hot and a bit chilly. We've had a small amount of rain - not much. Here's some pics....

Up on West 87th Street there's a community park that holds free concerts on Sundays. It's a bummer but we completely forgot about it today - I really wanted to go to as they had an American Jazz band. The previous Sunday was a Brazilian jazz group, the highlight of which was the piano player, that looked like an unassuming 1960's school teacher (but was a fantastic jazz pianist!). Unfortunately, the band leader wasn't a very good singer!....

This is a panorama south across the Central Park reservoir - the 'west side' and 'east side' of the park are left and right (you should be able to zoom in for detail)....

Guggenheim - the taller light brown building on the left is part of it ......

The Metropolitan Museum of Art. We have a pass and have been once - it is so huge - had a great time focussing on about 1/20th of what is there....

One of our walks was up Bowery, a major thoroughfare along the Lower East Side, which once had an elevated railway along it - see next picture (these 'el's' or elevated railways used to run up several avenues including Columbus next to us - thankfully they were torn down years ago). We went to the Tenement Museum here, which illustrated how the immigrants from Europe lived around 1900 - very interesting area. David Bowie's $17m apartment was nearby....

The school buses have enormous cantilevers at the back - not sure how that works. The dark building behind is an apartment building which has over the years housed several known characters - like the artist Mark Rothko who had a studio there for some time....

The black awning on the right is the site of CBGB's - famous music venue now a clothes shop. The situation is very nondescript, just facing a major thoroughfare (Bowery).....

Glimpse of buildings through wild landscape in Central Park - we've been through many times and it's fantastic....

Manhattan from Roosevelt Island....

South Street Sea Port area next to Downtown (very bottom tip of Manhattan). There are great public spaces now along the waterfront and on the renovated wharves. The improvements to Manhattan in the past 20 years or so have been enormous - a significant amount of parkland, bikeways and connected pathways have been installed. Every inch is utilised very well .....

A fantastic jazz group playing nearby as part of a downtown public service. They were awesome individual musicians and collectively. Note very small bass drum and second snare as tom....

St Paul's Church next to the World Trade Centre site. It is from 1760 or so. George Washington used to go here....

Cityscape with new World Trade Centre in centre....

St Paul's spire lost in the towers.....

The NYC Public Library is a major site in Midtown. Their 'Treasures' display is great - and holds the original Winnie the Poo, Tigger et al - ie. they are the ones the real Christopher Robin used to play with and his father wrote the books about....

The foyer of the Chrysler Building is great - I'd never been inside before. The second picture is looking up at the ceiling of the first picture.....

We went up to the Apollo Theatre in Harlem for the famous Amateur Night - what a hoot - you can clap or boo! The crowd boo'd off about 3 contestants!....

Cityscape - the very thin towers are all pretty new and are the ones you can see in the shots I have taken from Central Park looking back at the city (it's called 'Billionaires Row' given the price of living in the towers)....

We loved the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). This is a picture of architectural elements from the early 1900's, including works by Gaudi and Frank Loyd Wright....

The original soup cans, without the Little Mermaid (see earlier post).....

7th Avenue was closed off yesterday for some kind of market - it was pretty long - not sure why or whether it is regular....

Also yesterday, was the first ever Haitian Flag Day where they celebrated 220 years of independence. The parade went to Central Park West and was mostly staged at the end of our street - lots of dancing and bright costumes.....

For some reason, an iconic old cab was in front of the NYC Public Library .....

Inside the Guggenheim. The building is fantastic and now very well renovated.....

St John's Cathedral at the border of the Upper West Side and Harlem - it's the biggest in the city. Today we did a big walk through Harlem which was fascinating - now much gentrified but still pretty run down in parts....

Waiting for the subway on the way home....