Back travelling again - thank goodness!

OK - so maybe my destination this time isn't quite as exotic as some of the places I've been to this past year, but New York City will always be a favourite haunt of mine!!

And it's sort of a habit of mine now ... to blog while travelling ... so for those of you who are still faithfully checking in to my blog here's something new for you to take a peek at.

As many of you will know, I come to NYC fairly frequently so I don't really do too many "touristy" things when I'm here.  That being said though, NYC is, and always will be, a fascinating city just to walk around in and so my camera and I have done a bit of walking these past couple of days.

The Waldorf Astoria 

Saint Bartholomew's Episcopal Church

The Helmsley Building

Rockefeller Centre

 Looking north from Times Square

Times Square, looking south

It was a beautiful weather day yesterday so I decided to walk The High Line - which is very quickly becoming one of my most favourite public spaces!  The High Line was built in the 1930s, as part of a massive public-private infrastructure project called the West Side Improvement.  It lifted freight traffic 30 feet in the air, removing dangerous trains from the streets of Manhattan's largest industrial district, but no trains have run on the High Line since 1980.  Friends of the High Line is a community-based non-profit group which formed in 1999 when the historic structure was under threat of demolition.  Friends of the High Line works in partnership with the City of New York to preserve and maintain the structure as an elevated public park.

Looking down onto 10th Avenue from the High Line 

Excellent lounge chairs!! 

Presented by Friends of the High Line, High Line Art commissions and produces public art projects on and around the High Line.  Founded in 2009, High Line Art presents a wide array of artwork including site-specific commissions, exhibitions, performances, video programs, and a series of billboard interventions.  High Line Art invites artists to think of creative ways to engage with the uniqueness of the architecture, history, and design of the High Line and to foster a productive dialogue with the surrounding neighbourhood and urban landscape.

Although the sculpture in the above photo is supposed to be the focus of the High Line public art, I also really loved the sign in the background... and here it is close up just in case you can't quite read it:

And speaking of signage, here are a couple of other signs, or streetscapes that's I've seen while I've been out and about that I think really exemplify what New York City is all about:

Despite a very less-than-ideal weather forecast for today I decided to head on over to Brooklyn for a little while this morning and I spent a few hours wandering around the Brooklyn neighbourhoods of Dumbo (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) and Brooklyn Heights.

 The Manhattan Bridge overpass

The Brooklyn Bridge 

Looking across the East River to Lower Manhattan 

The tallest building in the centre is the new World Trade building

A "pop up pool" - how cool is that?  And you've just got to love the background...

The Brooklyn Heights house where Truman Capote wrote "Breakfast At Tiffany's" recently sold for $12.5M.   The 1839 house features 11 bedrooms, a 2,500-square-foot garden and a massive wine cellar, and it is the most expensive single-family home ever sold in Brooklyn Heights.

It turns out that the rainy weather that was being forecast is exactly what we got, so after a few hours of walking around in the rain in Brooklyn I decided to come back to the hotel to dry off ... and I think now I'll partake in one of my most favourite indoor pursuits ... shopping.