Times Square

I'd been promising Nicole that we'd go see Times Square (she's never been) since way before we left Miami, and today we finally made the trip. We were planning on doing a guided tour, but she didn't want to do one today (something about not getting a spot), especially since the internet was only set-up yesterday. And so we spent most of the time walking around, drinking coffee, and gawking like tourists.

Somewhere around Bryant Park on 42nd street, we got caught in a Dominican Republic day parade. There was a brief police chase in which a large officer flew rather gracefully through the air to tackle the dreadlocked fellow next to me, but aside from that, it was uneventful.

This is one of New York's Public Libraries, overlooking Bryant Park. I recall spending quite a bit of time here when I worked for Exploration Summer Programs, chaperoning high-school students on field trips after I graduated from college.

I've always found the statues in and around Rockefeller Center fascinating, but not so much that I'm going to go research anything about them (if you recall, this mindset afflicted by knowledge of bridges in the last post. I don't think I'd make it as a tour guide). However, I believe the one below to be Atlas - I recognize it from the cover of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

This one is Prometheus - the man who stole fire from the gods. It's supposed to represent knowledge and light, I suppose.

This is St. Patrick's Cathedral, which Nicole found quite awe-inspiring. I had a hard time remembering whether or not I'd been to this one, but it was nice having a look, especially since I'm reading Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth

This is commercialism at its finest. Nearly all of the glitz and flash of Times Square is entirely due to advertisements.

This was as close as we could get to the Empire State Building before it began to pour.

Since we missed it yesterday, we got to go see Inception in Imax. I'm not going to tell you how much I paid, but it was almost obscene. For any other movie, it would have been - but Inception was so good that, honestly, it was worth it. I like my movies a particular kind of heavy, but I also like them smart. Gunplay doesn't hurt either, and this movie delivered damn near perfectly. It was such an excitingly pleasant movie experience that I find myself strongly considering it's place among my very favorites. It's one of those rare gems that toys with the human condition as well as with the definition of reality - but perhaps I just loved it because I'm a sucker for dreams.