New York the fifteenth

I picked a good day to escape from New York. There's lootings where the power is out, violence in the gas station queues, the distinct smell of garbage piling up - the sanitation services have all been reassigned to storm cleanup duty.

Not to say New York still isn't amazing. It was crisp and sunny, the subway was free, and I had 90 minutes for a final fling.

The Lincoln Centre is a bunch of performing arts venues all together in a huge amazing complex. It's also where the Juilliard School is - you know, that place that people get accepted to and then can't attend because of dramatic reasons.

Lincoln Centre doggie.

The Metropolitan Opera House is currently showing a season of The Tempest. How spookily prescient.

I had no idea Chuck Bass lived on the West Side.

My last view of New York from the cab. The car service I had booked to the airport had to cancel due to no gas. I was super lucky to get a cab, and the driver told me he queued at a gas station from 1am until 6am. I suspected he was exaggerating, until we passed a queue for gas at least a kilometre long. Bloody hell. Needless to say, I tipped like a Rockefeller.

This was scribbled on the back of the driver's seat in my cab. How appropriate.

New York the fourteenth

Mostly shopping today. I only like shopping under two conditions: that I know what I want, and that I know where to get it. Souvenir shopping does not meet either of these requirements - but it's the unspoken price for getting picked up at the airport at the other end.

This is actually yesterday - Halloween cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery. I hope that the storm had thrown them off their game somehow and these are not the cupcakes that built an empire, because the half of one I ate was really really awful. I do like the black cat hiding in the icing though.

Amongst the Ns at the United Nations. Hi Helen!

O...K then.

Oh, this is really cool - the Helmsley Building on Park Ave. It's built over the road and the cars tunnel through it.

Not that I haven't already passed this way several times, but I finally got a photo. Wheeee!

Yikes. Overkill much?

Self portrait, Saks Fifth Avenue window.

Rat sculpture. Tee hee.

The astute reader will have noticed I'm not at the basketball right now. Postponed. Bah. No giant foam finger for Amy.

New York the thirteenth

Hey, my thirteenth day in New York is Halloween! I wonder if this entitles me to a free haunting or face-rip-offening...

I walked right around Central Park today, up the west side and down the east. Central Park West is a bit of an obstacle course of fallen branches and leaf piles, but Upper East Siders seem to have used the power of hired help to clean their side up.

Hey, an Apple store queue. I don't think they're even queueing for anything, it's just something that spontaneously happens around Apple stores.

The Dakota. Imagine...if the park had been open and I'd been able to go to Strawberry Fields.

Freaking avalanche.

Northwest corner of Central Park, Fred Douglass Circle.

Bricked-up windows in Morningside Heights. Some nights you can still hear the screams...

Morningside Park and the Cathedral of St John the Devine. No barbecuing in this area - all religious martyrs must be crucified or beheaded.

The northeast and least impressive corner of the park, but I've caught them all now.

At least with all these closed gates you can get some really cool pictures of gates.

Upper East Side. I could totally stand to live here - even though I think it's actually a dentist's office.

Cute UES flower bed on the footpath.

Louis Armstrong sculpture on the Park Ave median strip.

And finally, books on the windowsill of my hotel's dining room. Smirk.