Saturday, July 26, 2008

Trip de Newyork - July 4rth

I wanted to write up a travelogue for the trip to New York but I am pretty bad at it. But worth a try I guess. We (Abhijit, Sreeraj, Deepak,Rajeev(Non-mallu), Rajesh, Sanu & me) was the gang assembled. Sriraj and Rajesh joined us in New York. Poor Rajeev had a bad time roaming around with five mallu speaking guys who took liberty to talk all the time in malayalm. But it was nice that Rajeev understood 'Enniku Vishakunne - I am hungry' all the way because that was one phrase that repeated all day.



This was not at all a planned trip and we liked it that way. None of us had anything specific to see in NY. So we started off around 5:30 am from Newhaven train station. The Newhaven station, CT is a small compact station with a great waiting lounge. Also took a snap of the toy train display in the station.



We had a 2 hour train journey from Newhaven to Grand central railway station. The train journey was made memorable with some amazing snaps from my friend Sanu and a good deal of posing.


Me trying to read the NY map, its really complicated! Courtesy Sanu



Abhijit giving a pose Courtesy Sanu

Deepak, lost in the poster Courtesy Sanu
Grand central station stands up to its name with heavy looking pillars, a four sided round clock and some beautiful sealing drawings.
Grand Central Courtesy Sanu
From Grand Central our first stop was at Brookline Bridge. A long cable stayed bridge with twin pillars which made us think about SRK running around in the movie ‘Kal Ha NA Ho’. The view to Manhattan from the bridge was too good.

Brookline Bridge Downtown view from Central park
The day was too hot and humid. It made us think about days we had in Trivandrum and Ernakulum. After a 30 to 45 minute walk and bird watching the fellow joggers over the bridge we head to the Battery park. One thing I did not understand was, why these joggers where particular to run on this busy bridge on which people hardly allowed them to run. But on an empty bridge even I would have loved to run.
This is my second visit to central Park in New York. Last time when we came here, we were busy doing this
Sleeping Beauty - Anoop (last trip to NY)


This time we went into the church near by the ground zero which had lots of memories from the sep11 day. The place was quiet and I felt really heavy going around. . On the way we visited another church with heavy and beautiful glass windows. I struggled to get a good shot of it. Even with a 'No-photography' sign board, people were crazy taking snaps @ this place
A fantastic shaded glass work in Trinity Church


Next to the famous 'Bull'

Next stop was near the fire holding lady.
Lonely lady on the back ground Courtesy Sanu


Kids playing in water fountain, A joy to watch .....
We didn’t bother going to the island as the queue length was too much and we spend almost three hours sitting around the bench doing bird watching and also one of the best things I can do – Sleeping. My cozy cushion bed was a better option to sleep but sleeping in the busiest city in the world is another feeling. The central park had a touching moment when I saw this ballet dancer who was posing herself like this for more than an hour for money. The worst part was her mom was sitting by a side bench watching her doing this.

The dancer and Kid posing

Kids @ Central Park

Saxophone player ....all alone


The small girl trying to pose hardly knows what exactly is going on. We spend another three hours in the central park before moving to the Time square.


Relaxed horse ride @ Central Park


A peace ful evening @ central park Courtesy Sanu


Contrasting smiles ;)


After another set of photo posing in front of NASDAQ and time square we headed for the 34rth Street to see the fireworks as it was on July 4rth.We managed a place by 11:00 pm on a drizzling rain to see 20 minutes fire display. It was not an ideal place to get snaps of Fire works and I didn’t bother much to loose the amazing fire works by futile attempt to catch them in my snap-N-shoot camera.


Other than posing for snaps and bird watching we didn't visit any place of particular interest. It was a wonderful get away trip to New York. Some how I felt New York is crammped than any other place I have been to, even crammped than Tokyo ...

More snaps at http://www.flickr.com/photos/kurianjose

1 comment:

Rivas said...

Good trip, mate.