Time for a beer...

I have to say that today has been an enormous pleasure.  After breakfast we headed off to collect our New York passes, stopping to enjoy Times Square on the way.  (The image here is, of course, the phonograph I mentioned in my previous blog.)  I didn't know a chunk of Times Square has been pedestrianised since I was last here, prior to 9/11.  It is just so vibrant.  And the ads are even more spectacular than they were last time.

Then we meandered off to the Rockefeller Center to go to the observation platform 68 stories up.  The pics leave something to be desired as it was a brilliant day but a tad hazy, and in the pics there is more haze than anything else.  But I guess we were up there an hour or more just drinking in the view.  The last time I saw NYC in daylight from a height was from the top of the World Trade Center.  I actually think that the view from the Rockefeller Center may be better because the city is all round you, rather than in one direction as it was from the WTC.

I wish I could bottle the sense of confidence and energy that I pick up whenever I visit New York.  Standing up here overlooking my favourite city must be how my laptop feels when it returns to base and gets plugged in to the mains again.

Bonnie has had a great day.  Her camera is smoking hot.  She was like a child set loose in a toy store, with a free pass to all the toys, on Christmas Day.  It gives me great pleasure to see her happy, and this is the happiest I've seen her in a long time.

After watching the skaters at Rockefeller Plaza we walked down to Grand Central to book for the walking tour tomorrow, so I'll save that for then.  There are highlights to mention!  Then off to the New York Public Library.  I'll save the photographs of the Rose Main Reading Room and so on until they go on Picasaweb later.  It was here that I had another great moment: a Gutenberg Bible.  The first major printing work in Europe, done in 1455.  About 70 copies survive, and here was one, in excellent condition.  The photograph isn't great because of the glass case and the reflection it creates.  But I could not help remembering how much of our culture was driven by this first printed book.  Once printing was established there came the demand for freedom of thought and freedom of expression and so many other things we take for granted.

In between Grand Central and the Library we made a stop at an adjacent building - Walter Chrysler's classic.  Of course we went into the lobby and Bonnie took a photo or two.  But I'll save the account of that, with a few of the other pictures we have of that great architectural confection, for a blog entry all of it's own.  There is still time to enter the sweepstake.  Entries range from barely more than 10 to well over 100.  I know, but I'm not telling!