Hi from New York

Well, Krista and I are in New York City for Memorial Day weekend. We left San Diego at 11PM on the red-eye for La Guardia, with a 6AM stopover in O'Hare Airport. Breakfast was served on the O'Hare to La Guardia leg, pancakes with sausages (it was actually pretty good). Normally domestic first class isn't that much better than coach, but it was nice to be able to stretch out and relax. I think we got about three hours' sleep on the trip ('airplane' sleep of course, which means not really).

We flew in to La Guardia with this view of New York (you can click for a close up):
For those who haven't been, that's the south end of Manhattan Island, where we'll be spending most of our time the next couple of days.

After getting a hotel room we went for a walk around midtown, starting with central park. Here's a pretty picture of the pond on the south side of the park. If you click you can see the monster carp lurking just below the surface....


The weather is very warm today -- mid to high 80's, and humidity probably around 75%. It's actually not too bad, if you stick to the shade.

Here's me & Krista looking at the pond (you can see her camera hand in her sunglasses, guess we'll photoshop that out later):

After walking through Central Park we meandered down Fifth Avenue, stopping in at a couple of stores -- the flagship Apple store, of course, open 24/7 and full of urban & trendy hipsters checking their emails & updating their blogs; a stop at the NBA store for Krista's friend Dustin, and a stop in H&M for some clothes for Krista (I actually had a brief nap in that one while Krista shopped; it was deja vu all over again from 2003 when I came to NY with the choir and chaperoned a group of kids shopping in the same store)...

After that we went to Rockefeller Plaza and went up to the top (70th floor), called 'Top of the Rock'. There's quite a view from up there -- here's the north side of Manhattan (that's central park in the background):

And here's the south side (you can see the Empire State Building):
Next we wandered over to Times Square :We came back to the hotel at 3:30 or so, and are about to leave for an early dinner (it's 5:20 now). Krista napped for about 45 minutes and I worked on this blog entry (I know, I know, for 45 minutes work it should have been better. Hey, I'm exhausted). I think we'll probably crash after dinner, considering how tired we both are. If I have time later I'll add something else, otherwise I'll update tomorrow sometime.