30 Images Of New York: Happy Thanksgiving!

Every year around the Thanksgiving holidays I visit my family in New York. While much of the time is the usual visiting family and friends, we do end up taking in a few interesting sights and I always have my camera with me. I don’t claim to be a great photographer, but I sometimes manage to end up with a few decent pictures.

I thought I’d share a few as my way of saying thanks to all of you who read here and to share something of me and my last few days.

Apple Stores

Most of my family owns Macs and we have a tendency to visit some of the Apple stores when we’re near one. There really is something beautiful in the simplicity of the architecture of these stores and I’m always struck by the solid glass storefronts.

The store above is in Great Neck on Long Island and the store below is newest one in Manhattan near Lincoln Center. The Lincoln Center store is huge, filled with 2 stories of just about everything Apple carries with a glassed spiral staircase leading from upper to lower levels..

Sands Point Preserve

You generally don’t associate medieval castles with Long Island, but it’s what you’re met with at Sands Point Preserves in Port Washington. The castle isn’t exactly medieval having been built in the early 20th century, but it’s still not something you expect to see.

My dad, my brother, and myself spent a couple hours earlier this week walking the grounds.

It was a very overcast day, which is why the sky is all washed out, though maybe that washed out sky is fitting given the subject.

Even though I know this wasn’t built for defense, it’s easy to see how it might have worked to protect the main house on the other side of the grounds seen below.

Hempstead House sits a few hundred yards off the water, with the castle on the opposite side.

There are trails through the preserves, making for a nice walk through some woodland.

The structure below is an interesting find in the woods. I’m not entirely sure what it may have been used for.

The trails end on the water. The stone wall is the edge of the yard of the Hempstead House and the water is Long Island Sound.

Years ago there were piers on the water, but a hurricane wiped out much of the what had been there.

Below is an old fence that caught my attention. In the distance is Glen Cove and a similar preserve to this one.

The stone that used to serve as part of the concrete sea wall is now all in ruin and overgrown with moss.

If you’ve ever read the Great Gatsby the images above would be part of East Egg as described in the novel.

Manhattan

Each year on the day before Thanksgiving, my mom, my brother, and myself spend the day in Manhattan. We start with a visit to a museum or two on the upper east side and make our way across the city to the west side. This year we only took in one exhibit, featuring the work of Edward Hopper.

The exhibit was at the Whitney Museum and the image of the museum below was taken waiting in line

We make our way to the west side via Central Park, which seems beautiful no matter when you walk through it.

There’s always an interesting juxtaposition between the park and the surrounding buildings.

And we always manage to find some interesting things to stop and look at like the rock below.

We take different paths through the park each year, but always make our toward the building below. I’m not sure what the building is, though it’s near the Dakota where John Lennon used to live and where I think Yoko Ono still lives. Often we end up existing the park at Strawberry Fields which is the memorial to John Lennon.

We head for the building above, because it takes us just to where the floats are blown up each year for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. We were a little earlier than usual this year so not many of the floats were inflated though we did catch a few like Shrek

and Snoopy

and a new float for the Kool-Aid man.

A few years ago (2007) I shared more images of the floats being inflated before the parade, which should give you a better idea of the scene.

The floats are inflated on both sides of the Museum of Natural History. Though we didn’t take in the museum this year, a previous visit is when we first realized we could see the floats pre-parade.

After a quick tour of the floats we head south down Columbus a few blocks to 74th street to enjoy lunch at Patsy’s Pizza. If you’re ever in the city I highly recommend the pizza at any of the Patsy’s locations. Expensive, but delicious.

Top of the Rock

This year we closed our day with a trip to the observation deck at Rockefeller Center, known as Top of the Rock. I’d been to the top of the Empire State Building before, but never Top of the Rock.

The views of the city are breathtaking like the one looking north over Central Park.

or looking south toward the Empire State Building. The image at the start of this post is the same view, focused on the one building.

This is the view looking north west toward the Hudson River.

This is the south west view. In the center of the image below you can see the ball that drops on New Years. That’s the 2010 ball in the image to be replaced soon by the 2011 ball that will start at the top of the pole before dropping as 2010 turns to 2011.

Another view looking to the north west. You can see the George Washington Bridge across the Hudson connecting Manhattan and Fort Lee New Jersey.

Back again looking south.

And a closeup testing the limits of both the physical and digital zoom of my camera to capture the Statue of Liberty.

I hope you enjoyed a few of the images I’ve taken the last few days as well as a little bit about how I spend the time around Thanksgiving. Again my apologies for the washed out images. Blame it on the weather and a lack of time to improve them in Photoshop. Hopefully you at least got to see a few things you might not otherwise have been able to see.

In a couple of hours our guests will be arriving and we’ll be enjoying a turkey dinner with all the trimmings and a side order of football like most households in the United States today.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone celebrating today. Happy Thursday to everyone else. Either way I hope you enjoy the day.

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