sonofgroucho

Sorry it’s taken me a while to write about our week in NYC, but part of the time I’ve been uploading around 180 pictures of the city to my Flickr account, and I’ve also written several blog entries about it starting with this one.

Highlights included: (1) going up the Empire State Building by day and by night to take some pictures I’m really pleased with; (2) visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art (where they actually let you take photos of the artworks as long as you don’t use flash); (3) going to see Mel Brooks’ musical “The Producers” for half price; (4) visiting the American Museum of Natural History and the Rose Center for Earth and Space; (5) visiting Brooklyn Bridge, the Ground Zero site and Central Park.

Slight disappointments were: (1) how small our Manhattan hotel room was (despite the hotel being the dearest we’d ever stayed in); (2) visiting the Guggenheim Museum (didn’t get a good look at the outside of the building because it’s being renovated; staff were stuffy and unhelpful; can’t take a lot of what passes as modern art seriously).

Overall though was a great week and I would go back again, though probably not for several years.

I thought it would never come around, but we’re going to NYC next Tuesday! Wosog (my wife) has recently acquired the “photography bug” from me, and I’m sure we’ll bring back hundreds of pictures from The Big Apple.

Watch this space….

We flew to Florence on RyanAir from Prestwick near Glasgow. It was a direct flight to Pisa. We left Prestwick early in the morning and, after a train ride from Pisa to Florence, we were at our destination by mid-afternoon. The weather was fine for 3 out of the 4 days we were in the city.

Things we did again were: climbing the 414 steps of the Campanile to get a great overview of Florence; visiting the Piazza della Signoria and walking round the Palazzo Vecchio; crossing and photographing the Ponte Vecchio; visiting the Boboli Gardens and the Pitti Palace.

New things that we did this time, and would recommend, were: visiting San Lorenzo and the Medici Chapel; finding the queue short enough to get into the Uffizi Gallery.

If you want to see more pictures from the trip click here.

Blog posts about the trip start here.