A Visit to the Empire State Building

While in Manhattan a few weeks ago, I made a visit to the Empire State Building. I plunked down the $20 to get up to the 86th floor Observation Deck. It’s a self-guided tour, but multitudes of jacketed escorts direct the lines of people (and lines and lines and lines of them) through corridors and up elevators.

The Empire State Building was constructed (completed) in 1931. It was the tallest building in the world, until the World Trade Center was built in 1972. It’s designed in the glamorous Art Deco style.

I was surprised at the crowds in the building. It was Wednesday morning, and yet there were hundreds of people waiting to get up to the Observation Deck. Most of the time was spent waiting in line to get up there.

Midway through the journey of walking down long hallways and taking elevators up, we had to have our bags scanned through an x-ray machine and we had to pass through a metal detector. It was chaotic. I haven’t been to an airline since 9/11, but the experience must be as or more confusing and noisy. Yuk.

A large family ahead of me caused a small ruckus with the guards. Read more

Photo Hunters: Dark

UPDATE: I didn’t know it until after I posted this– I was checking news headlines this afternoon; I see that last night some people were trapped in the Empire State Building elevators when construction workers had accidentally severed power lines to the building. OOPS! These folks were REALLY in the dark! All is well, although one woman was hospitalized with an injury, related to her prying open a door to try to get out. The MSNBC story is here.

Today’s Photo Hunt is a tough one for me. I think I used up all my creativity this week. I couldn’t think of anything “dark”! I flitted through my photos… should I talk about the time a thunderstorm knocked out the lights while we were at the zoo? Or about the time when a huge lake effect snowstorm formed over Lake Ontario while we were visiting (and I had a 2 hour drive in the snow ahead of me)? Hmm.

Well, I chose this photo. It’s a picture of night time in Manhattan. Real creative, huh?

Manhattan is known as “the city that never sleeps.” You know why? Because there is so much noise! No one can ever sleep, lol! I liked my experience in Manhattan (I was a student there), but I greatly prefer country life.

My photo is an old one– taken from the 80s. It’s the Empire State Building. It was late at night, but New York is still very brightly lit even at night. Nighttime in Manhattan is the same as daytime, except that the sky is turned off when it’s nighttime.

How did your Photo Hunt go today?

Photo Hunters: Bright

This was a difficult one for me! I was clueless. All I could think of was a nice photo of bright city lights, but I have none in my Flickr stash. So I dug out two photos of buildings with bright lights. I love the colored lights. The first photo is of the Turning Stone Casino, in Oneida, NY. It’s owned by the Oneida Indians of Upstate New York. The Casino and resort are now one of the most luxurious and most popular resorts in the country. The new golf course is becoming more popular, too.

We visited the Casino for a conference hosted by the Alexander Hamilton Institute of Clinton, NY. You can read about that here.

The next photo is an old one of the Empire State Building. I took it in 1986, with my old beat-up Kodak point-and-shoot camera (we used camera film back then, lol). I lived in Manhattan for a year, as a drama student (but I seemed to do more musicals and handling of theater rope than drama!). You can read my post about living in Manhattan here. From my apartment window, I had a magnificent view of the Chrysler Building. The Chrysler Building was lit up every night, too. For Christmas, the lights were red and green, and for Easter, the lights were green and pink. lol. I took a photo of it, but I must have lost it with many other memories when my house burned down.

So that’s what I have for this week! How about you?