New York City!

*snores* I am so tired, y'all. Here are my photos:

First up: the rest of the photos I took on Sunday (after we left the house), starting with this of the fire pit at the GS council office. It has some loose bricks that could be rather dangerous. (I had to do a safety assessment of this site a couple of weeks ago.)

Betsy's DFTBA bracelet! I have one as well, in blue. We got them at Universal Studios when we were in Orlando last November. Don't Forget To Be Awesome!

Moss on the parking lot. Yeah, I got stared at for taking this one. But just look at that focus! It's magnificent! And the detail! *swoon*

I won't show you all of them, but I took a lot of pictures like this. I put my camera on "museum" to get a slower shutter speed and pressed the shutter button just as a car or truck drove past.

Some interesting lines were the result!

This one also includes reflections in the Tennessee River of the Chattanooga lights:

Ah, the story with this picture. We were just inside Virginia, near Wytheville, when our bus just stopped. It was about half past three in the morning. They tried adding gas, they tried jumping it, but the bus just wouldn't start up. So we sat there for five hours until something they did worked. After the sun came up we finally got going somehow, but before that happened they placed this sign across the road so the passing motorists wouldn't hit the people working on our bus.

I got ZERO fire hydrant shots, but here's a mailbox! I don't remember where it was - some truck stop. It's where we had breakfast Monday, so somewhere in Virginia. Virginia, by the way? The state that never ends.

I love this stuff... it's good AND good for you!

Hello Virginia! This was after we stopped for breakfast AND after I slept for a while. Like I said, Virginia goes on forever and ever.

I LOVE this picture and definitely would have uploaded it to the project site if I wasn't doing vacation pics.

Real NYC taxis! (With a horribly slow shutter speed... which actually gives it a kinda cool look)

This are the lights just inside the place we stopped for dinner in the city: Chelsea Market.

Inside Chelsea Market, we ate at Friedman's Lunch. I had a hamburger!

Random beautiful pipe:

Random hardware! (On a door)

Ooh, the street-paint arrows in NY look different than the ones in Birmingham. Theirs are longer:

Long exposure in the Lincoln Tunnel (which is EXCEEDINGLY long, holy crap):

The BEST view of the city at night is actually from Hoboken in New Jersey, which is where we stopped to take these shots. I only had one or two really turn out, but Betsy got a FANTASTIC one! Check it out on the project site by clicking here.

I love having a sister who shares my love of photography, because when I asked if I could photograph her muffin at breakfast, she was like, "Sure."

Holy muffins, this billboard just tickled me half to death. This storage company had other funny signs all over the city, but this was my favorite.

We had tickets to this, the Seaport Museum, that were good for Tuesday or Wednesday. Except... the museum wasn't open until Thursday. Fail.

The sky was absolutely beautiful Tuesday, and I love how it reflects in the shiny buildings:

Chinatown, I officially love you. But John Green officially hates you.

There goes Emily trying to be artistic again... this was on a picture frame at the restaurant where we ate lunch in Little Italy.

And to think that I saw it on Mulberry Street! (I love Dr. Seuss.)

The Empire State Building was fun! It was cold and windy way up there, but it wasn't nearly as terrifying as I thought it would be. The view was spectacular, and I got some great pictures:

See? You can see for miles! (This was right before the sun set - see my project photo for the 15th for a great night shot.)

On Wednesday we all got up at an ungodly hour and trucked over to the Today show in the RAIN and the COLD. It was absolutely miserable. When I felt frostbite setting in, I knew I had to get inside. So I went to this below-street-level mall-type-thing next to the ice rink you always see on TV and had some hot chocolate. Sure, Betsy got to shake hands with Al Roker. But I was WARM.

Then it was time for a bus ride 'round the city to see some sights. Near the site of the Twin Towers, there was this random bit of fence to which people have attached ceramic tiles painted with hopeful and inspiring messages and pictures. (And it actually needs to be rotated clockwise, but... Emily's tired.)

It's the post office! Along the top there, I don't know if you can see it, but it has that famous motto of postal workers: "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." (Actually, the postal workers have no official motto, according to Wikipedia...)

Then we took a ferry across the river...

From which we saw Lady Liberty! She was closed to the public, though, so we stayed on and rode the ferry over to Ellis Island.

There goes Emily being artistic again:

Our ferry, "Miss Liberty," was very nice and even had food for sale.

The architecture inside the building on Ellis Island is spectacular - this ceiling is three stories tall!

This just looks like a super-fun place to do your laundry, right??

See this NBC peacock symbol? This is a decoration on the railing inside their gift shop. In front of this railing sits a very LARGE version of the logo...

...AND IT'S FILLED WITH SIX DIFFERENT COLORS OF M&Ms! Man, the lengths to which New Yorkers will go to be the biggest and the best.

Before going to our Broadway show (*grumble* Spider-man *grumble*), we stopped in at the Toys 'R Us in Times Square. The walkway just inside is lighted with these cool colored dots:

And they have a THREE-STORY ferris wheel! The rest of my photos are blurry, so here's a shot of its inner workings. You're welcome, nerds! Betsy rode it with our friend Kirsten, in a car shaped like one of those red cars that little kids can go around in... I think they're made by Fisher Price. Here's a picture.

The lamp posts outside the Plaza Hotel (home of the much-loved and rather annoying Eloise) have some really disturbing carvings if you care to look closely:

On Thursday I took the subway for the first time, from Grand Central Station! It's absolutely beautiful, and given time to get used to it, I could really learn to like the subway.

RANDOMLY INSERTED PICTURE OF OLD GIRL SCOUT BADGES! We visited the National Headquarters on Fifth Avenue and got the grand tour.

Another subway pic. I love the way they denote the different lines, with these bold circles. It appeals to the designer in me, I guess.

We didn't actually ENTER Central Park, but we did see into part of it. Here's a nice bridge over a body of water. Atop the bridge are probably drunk revelers - this was St. Patrick's Day, after all.

A less-disturbing carving from the same lamp post at the plaza:

And another shot from Grand Central. It struck me as funny that they'd use the word "REMARKS," for some reason. It's a perfectly good word; perhaps I was just surprised to see such a nice word, having just escaped the madness of the revelers.

My very last NYC picture: a T-Mobile billboard. They're my carrier, so I have to show them a little love here. And honestly, this billboard is pretty funny!