Visit to New York City

From 12th to 15th July I went to New York City from Friday evening to Monday morning and stayed with Carla, my post-doc friend from Brown! Here’s a quick rundown of what we got up to.

Friday evening

I got in around 9 pm, so we just walked through Times Square to the subway. Times Square at night is intense, exactly what I imagined from a Big American City but with more neon and so much advertising. The news ticker going along the side of a building made me feel like I was in a movie myself and about to find out about Patient Zero of a new pandemic. It’s funny that before I came I thought American cities were usually like this, when actually most of them are small and quaint, more like towns.

Saturday

Brooklyn Botanic Gardens

These were gorgeous. I liked that they had the plants arranged into a room for each biome, e.g. desert, tropical. Apparently Australia is temperate? I particularly liked the water plants – something about water makes looking at it very peaceful for me. I did have to keep taking breaks to sit in the shade, though – it was very hot.

I like this picture.

Brooklyn Library

Has hieroglyphic-looking pictures referencing famous books covering the front wall. Also saw an ad for a party for Harry Potter’s birthday.

Brooklyn Bridge

We walked across Brooklyn bridge, which took a very long time but gave us pretty views when we weren’t dodging cyclists barreling towards us.

Financial District

We didn’t go up the World Trade Center building, but we did walk around the area and get gelato, which is just as good and considerably cheaper. We also saw a monument to Alexander Hamilton, which I had to get a photo of in memory of my Hamilton fangirl days. We saw the Wall Street bull too.

Staten Island & Statue of Liberty

We then got the ferry to Staten Island, which is the most distant of NYC’s five boroughs and is basically beside New Jersey. That’s something I’ve noticed about the East Coast of America while I’ve been here – there are so many islands! They really do not shy away from building beside the sea or over or under rivers.

The ferry is free, which is nice, although it was less nice that while queuing the big neon sign in front of us boasted to potential advertisers of the captive audience they have for 25 minutes each way 24 hours a day.

Anyway, we got somewhat close to the Statue of Liberty and it’s actually quite a beautiful statue. It was interesting seeing Ellis Island – I keep thinking ‘see where my ancestors landed’, but considering I’m 100% Irish, not Irish-American, clearly those weren’t my ancestors, but my compatriots I suppose. A place of significance anyway, important in producing an Irish ethnic group of 80 million people despite there being only 5 million people in Ireland.

As is apparently common, we saw nothing of Staten Island itself apart from buying drinks in the shop/port and seeing a display about oyster conservation, because we turned right back around and got on the ferry back.

We then got the ferry home and by that time there was only an hour or so to wait before a free concert in a park right beside Carla’s apartment! (highlighting this because it's an event and I don't have photos for it, not for emphasis). 

Sunday

Meeting

I had my first in-person meeting with Nan, who runs the America’s Amazing Teens project I’m part of. It was good to meet her and Ann Makosinski in person for the first time, talk about the book I’m working on and find out what they’re up to.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

This is a big place, so I didn't see all of it in the few hours we were there. I ran around the various European paintings (where they make you wear your bag on the front or on one shoulder, grr), saw the classical sculptures, and looked at art from different places like Polynesia (liked this one apart from the animal killing it glorifies - saw this in the Smithsonian as well amid statements I consider oxymoronic like 'they respected them' alongside 'they killed them'), Africa (why were so many of these sculptures terrifying-looking?!), and the Islamic world (some nice tiling and rugs like in my old house).




Carla, Clive and I got a nice photo on the roof of the building:

The real work of art in the Met museum (I KID).

Central Park
Just briefly dipped in here because it was apparently not to be missed. Going by the map it's huge - I've actually noticed America seems to have tons of greenspace. Have a photo.



Monday morning
Got up at 7.15 am, horror of horrors (it gets worse in July - the morning of the day I'm writing this I got up at 4.08 am) to get the 9 am bus back to Providence and got to work around 1 or 1.30 pm. Obviously this was not the plan but anyway. Carla came with me to the bus station because she's great. It was a fun weekend.