Well 2014 is finally upon us, I’m settling into my new flat in Berlin, but wanted to write up about our trip to the states. My sister wanted to visit some relatives in New York and despite being there so many times that all the tourist attractions have been completed (some twice!) we still bit the bullet and went over there.
Although in our last trip, we had visited Brooklyn, we spent this time walking around it a bit more. Williamsburg in particular has developed the last time we were there, and playing the “spot the hipster” game stopped being fun when our tallies got too high. We hadn’t been down to the Brooklyn Promenade before so we visited it for the awesome view of Manhattan’s skyline from a different perspective.
Like many other cities in the world, New York has also adopted the rent a bike scheme. I didn’t notice many people using them and perhaps that’s because the streets don’t have any dedicated space to them and the streets are busy enough with both tourists and other road traffic.
We scouted out a few art houses around the West Village. I loved how they had a massive place, only showing a few pieces whilst others couldn’t seem to have enough. I’m guessing that one piece purchased by someone would be enough to pay for the exorbitant rents.
Our last trips had us visiting post Christmas, so this time it was nice to see the Empire State building all lit up with festive colours, instead of the cycling colours they use to herald in the new year. We were lucky that the weather wasn’t too bad – a couple of days after we left New York had that massive snowstorm that cascaded into a backlog of planes around the country.
Finally we spent Christmas with our extended family (aunts, uncles and cousins) with the newest edition being a photogenic house cat going by the name of Cooper. I was surprised at how friendly the cat was to new people, not being particularly alarmist about us and also very interested in the camera.
We certainly ate a lot, shopped a bit and also took a trip out to Washington that I’ll write up as a separate post.