Day 5 - Part II

For once the weather was cooperating with some clear skies, so I proceeded to walk around the observation deck (anti-clockwise). First subject was the Chrysler Building, probably my favourite.

This is in the direction of Central Park. There are a few tall buildings in the way ;-)

Turn a little to the left, and the Hudson River comes into view. Some of the larger ships of Fleet Week (JFK and a cruise ship) are in the third picture. Difficult to make out on the web though. They show up better in the fourth one.

Turning another 90 degrees places you in the direction of the financial district. Most marked feature are the Twin Towers, of course. I'll probably go back one day just to take a similar picture (at a better time of day though) to capture the after-September-11 view. I remember thinking that it would all still be there the next time, giving me a shot at taking pictures in better light. Which just shows how relative things can be.

A little to the right of the financial district is the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.

Closer to home, but still facing south, there's the Flat Iron Building, so named after it's distinctive triangle shape. I have some questions about the 'distinctive' part (this building can be found near the famous shampoo shop), but it's still a pretty building.

Finally, facing east, there's the East River. Amazing how they invent these names.

On the far right you can just see the Queensborough Bridge and Brooklyn Bridge. I'll leave it to you imagination to figure out to which borough each bridge leads >;-)

All good things come to an end however, and so did this trip. Timing was impeccable. We stopped off at the hotel to retrieve our luggage, called a cab out front, and went to the airport. New York being New York, something is always happening. While entering the hotel I noticed that a cabbie pulled a strange stunt: he appeared to refuse a ride to some people at the front of the queue and pulled round to the back of the queue again. By the the time we were waiting for turn in the cab queue, this driver was coming to the front again. Only to be promptly turned away by the guy from the hotel who was collecting tips from everybody, 'scuse me, make that 'directing the flows of cabs and passengers while blowing on his whistle'. Which accident paired us up with our driver, who happened to be very non-typical. For one thing, he was friendly. He spoke english. He answered questions with more than one syllable. He even agreed to take us over the Brooklyn Bridge instead of through the tunnel. OK, he was typical enough to hint a large tip was in order. Then again, he even seemed grateful for getting a fat tip. Weird man ;-) On the way we got a comprehensive discourse on how the New York taxi systems works. Quite interesting. The short version: you register with the taxi company, and whenever you feel like it, you call them and rent a car from them for a fixed shift duration. If you make less than what you paid in rent and petrol, too bad; if you make more: congratulations, welcome to the American dream.

I won't tell you how we 'accidentally' ended up at the very short queue for the business class check-in. Suffice it to say that it made the circle round again, as trying to jump the taxi queue at the airport was almost the first thing we did on American soil. This time it worked, though. Sorry. Won't happen again. Thank you ma'am.

Back to day 5 - Part I