Christmas in New York

While it was always going to be hard being away from home on Christmas day, if you're gonna be anywhere at such a time, it might as well be New York. So what did I get up to on Christmas? Well, after a bit of sleep-in, I took a walk along the East River, on the East Side of Manhattan. A pathway, of varying quality, runs all the way along the edge of the island from where I joined it, around 6th street, all the way up to 40somethingth street. One of my favourite things about this city (or any city, really), is that is has so many different faces and aspects - depending on where you see it from, there's an infinite number of beautiful views to be had - plus, in New York, you can look across the river and see Brooklyn, an impressive city in and of itself.

Diverting from the shoreline, I made my way into the North end of midtown, past the Citicorp centre (the giant, slope-roofed one in the skyline shot above), and found a couple of stores that were open on Christmas afternoon - one was that Apple store (Which is housed in a bunker underneath a hyper-futuristic glass cube, and literally never closes (24 hours a day, 365 days a year)). The other was even better then - the world's most famous toy store, FAO Schwartz was open, so I took the time to go in, have a wander around and see the famous giant keyboard (As famously seen in the Tom Hanks movie Big).

After a giant pretzel from one of the ubiquitous street-cart vendors (possibly my favourite New York photo so far, btw), I took a quick stroll through the southernmost part of Central Park. Despite the warmer weather, the surface of the lake was still frozen. It's a beautiful place, Central Park, and plays so well off of its uber-urban surroundings.

Heading back downtown, I came to Times Square, which is just as crazy a place as you might imagine - they reckon that half a million people pass through there in a day, which explains the cacophany of flashing lights, huge video screens and 10-storey billboards. It's like Las Vegas compressed into three blocks. Or maybe Las Vegas is Times Square spread out over a whole city - either way, with that number of computers and video screens in all packed into one place, something is bound to malfunction eventually :P

So it seems that Christmas Day is big movie release day today, so my plans to go See Gran Torino were disturbed by a sold out session. My alternative, while not exactly festive, turned out to be one of the best movies I've seen all year - Doubt, with Meryl Streep and Phillip Seymour Hoffman is pretty dark, but really excellent.

My Christmas Day was topped off by a nice meal at a restaurant nearby (including a very classy hamburger, and a ridiculously indulgent desert - espresso ice-cream, punctuated by chunks of brownie, topped with whipped cream and bookended by caramel-coated peanuts - yum!), then back to the hostel for an early night's sleep.

Today, I spent some time indulging some of my geekier habits. A morning visit to an awesome used video-game store was fun, followed by a trip to Battery Park City in Lower Manhattan to visit the Skyscraper Museum - student entry cost me two bucks fifty, and I spent almost an hour and a half in their one gallery - an exhibit about Hong Kong and New York kept me occupied for that long - what a bargain! Although I must admit that some of that hour and a half was spent in the museum store, wishing I could afford a 3200 piece skyscraper modelling kit :P. I rounded out the day with a trip to the P.S.1 contemporary art centre (my MOMA ticket got me in for free - it really was a thrifty day!). P.S.1 is really interesting, actually - it's a real, 29th century school building which has been retooled into a gallery - some of the spaces feel like ordinary galleries, but others are woven into the building - including one 'gallery' which is actually the old boiler-room, with furnace intact (but sadly inoperative :P).

All in all, then, a good couple of days - I'm still loving experiencing and exploring this city, and its many, many faces.