Previously, on 24 hours in New York City.
Antoine and Bérenger have been running across New York City for ten hours now. From Chinatown to Williamsburg, by Ground Zero and Liberty Island, they have been running, seeking the Truth. They are now in Central Park, where they unfortunately have assisted to a massacre: the shooting of a reality-TV scene.
The following takes place between 5:00 p.m. et 7:00 a.m.
We have to leave Central Park and head South. The easy way is to leave the park from its East border and take the metro near the Museum of Natural History.
A map save our life at that moment… it’s really difficult to find your way in such a big city…
To help you in your quest, you find three maps in your pouch…
5:15 p.m. The High Line.
This is certainly a place to see in New York: the High Line. The High Line was once an elevated railroad, which opened in 1934, bringing livestocks and products directly in the heart of the city. Abandoned, taken back by the nature, it has been reopened to public in 2009, as an elevated park.
What is really surprising, if we forget about its rangy shape of 1.5 miles, it’s its simplicity and most of all its integration of/with the environment. You walk in a lush green setting, in the middle of the buildings, above the streets. Beautiful, peaceful, new.
There are some kind of small lecture theaters, above the 10th St. Surprising.
Most of the original structure has been kept, going through the buildings and running over the streets. Some rails have been kept too, merging with the environment.
Green, buildings, happy people… almost like some of these ideal architect plans.
For an event, the water fountains of the High Line have been equipped with a special thing. They don’t deliver hearts, no, but when you push the faucet, a warm voice says some compliments and nice words to you. Hum.
6:00 p.m. Midtown.
Once down from the High Line, we head back to the geographic « center », Midtown. A lot to see there too. Just a few steps and you end up facing some beautiful and/or emblematic spots of New York City: from Bryant Park, on the 42nd Street, you cross quickly the 5th Street and its stores, then Grand Central Terminal, the majestic train station (and the most important one in the world with its 67 tracks. Did you know that the trains arrive on two levels?), and then the Chrysler Building, of which you certainly know the shape. The symbols are there until the end of East 42nd Street, where the UN headquarters are.
Midtown, it’s the neighborhood in which you don’t really know where to look, as there is a lot to see everywhere…
The famous hall of Grand Central Terminal, as seen as in approximately 3,856 movies.
Looking at the street map of New York, I’m happy to be “just” a pedestrian. Driving here must be crazy… In the other hand, the signs on the streets are really beautiful.
Pedestrian, period…
Left: Bryant Park, during a free and open music festival. Nice.
Right: (an unattended) mix of two pictures in Midtown. I just forgot to turn the wheel of my camera to move the film… The first one is a water tank at the top of a building, the second is from the Empire State Building where we haven’t been, yet.
6:45 p.m. Empire State Building.
See that! (if you read the legends that go with the pictures, you must have laughed there. If not, forget about the joke. Once explained, it doesn’t have the same effect).
Well. The sun is setting on the city. The mood is great, the windows of the buildings start to diffuse the orange light of the sun to the very ground… We have decided to enjoy the sunset from the rooftop of the Empire State Building.
When the Rockefeller Center offers a picture of you sitting on a girder (close your eyes and picture that famous photography of some workers drinking their hot chocolate and eating their Oreo, a thousand of meters above the street… you see it? Don’t forget to open your eyes to continue reading, it’s easier), the Empire State plays with its well-known monkey: King Kong. You can be taken in picture with it, while waiting in the line, and half of the entire marketing is dedicated to it, from posters to mugs or snow-balls in the souvenir shop…
Once at the top, the view is amazing: a panorama on the whole Manhattan and even New York, and a perspective at the South that is really impressive, Downtown, behind it the Hudson River and the East River merging, and even farther the Liberty Statue. Wow.
The sun is slowly going down, the city is falling asleep, the buildings start to look like light boxes, the streets resist, lightning up like little veins.
Left: the hall of the Empire State Building, a first open-mouth in front of so much magnificence.
Right: the North view. The sun slowly passes down. The contrasts are more sharp, the top of the buildings are lightning up…
Looking South. A bit misty. At the background on the left: the East River. More clear on the right: the Hudson River. At the very background: Downtown. At the back of the background, two little islands. The farthest is Liberty Island. You can see some kind of mass. It’s Her (don’t say her I called her that way).
7:20 p.m. (time of the picture). At night, the buildings seem to be really close to each other, like little pasteboard blocks with tiny lamps inside.
7:24 p.m. The Sun continues to disappear. The twilight is amazing from here.
The streets are still down there, now as little living veins. On the right part of the picture, the building is the Flatiron Building.
A few minutes to go down the building, stop by the souvenir shop, and we go dinner in Pongal, an excellent Indian and vegetarian restaurant. You have to try it if you’re in New York…
9:30 p.m. Times Square.
Digestive walk in the middle of the crowd. Times Square, which I don’t need to introduce, is a place that made much of an impact on my mind. So much technology everywhere, so much information at every moment… on Times Square, you don’t really know where to look. And the view is almost semi-spherical: there are things to see everywhere on the street, and up to the sky.
On Times Square, you feel really small.
On Times Square, your eyes hurt too. Continuously bright light, pictures which run on the walls, videos, news from the stock exchange… No rest for your eyes!
There are still little moments, like these hot-air vents from the subway, smocking in the street (and these three ladies that give the whole picture a little Sex And The City look).
The legendary cabs are also here.
Times Square with the Diana.
From there, we run a bit up North-West, to the Terminal 5, to enjoy a little concert of Beirut. A really good moment during the evening.
Leaving the concert, the fog was surrounding the city, adding another layer of mystery, revealing a face of the city we haven’t seen before.
12:10 a.m. Bonus Scene Solo: Through the Mist.
We decide to go back to Times Square. Antoine is taking the subway, to go home, and enjoy a peaceful and deserved night. Excited by this oppressive atmosphere, this fog sticked to the buildings, I decide to stay up and outside and to continue my night, walking.
Unusual situation, specific measures. I want to go back to places I’ve already seen. Even if the joy if the discovery won’t be there, the mist will add a new touch to this. Back to Midtown, Bryant Park, Grand Central Terminal, the Chrysler Building…
Leaving the Terminal 5, the heart of New York seems to have disappeared in that thick smoke…
The diffusion of the light is especially amazing this night…
… every single light seems to beat down on the street…
Oh… my beautiful and misty Chrysler…
Grand Central Terminal has its own…
… and it almost feels like we can smell the steam of the old trains that arrived here…
This last picture has been taken at 1:27 a.m., but you should know that if you drop me in a city like New York, I will surely have some insomnia. Impossible for me to go to bed when there’s so much to see, and to do outside, by day and by night…
The subway is open 24/24, it’s time to go discover a new place…
3:30 a.m. By the end of the night.
Yes. 3:30 a.m. for real. It’s almost the time it was when I took the picture below. I just went by the apartment to drop some stuff and went out again with my cameras for a little walk in this late night. It was almost the same schedule every night: taking time, slowly, to discover New York City, until the night fairy came to visit me (not until exhaustion… 
).
Left: somewhere near Colears Hook Park, a park by the East River. The nearest bridge is the Manhattan Bridge, and in the back, the Brooklyn Bridge.
Right: Essex St. Station, by night, waiting for a train to go to the North of the Island and seek for new discoveries…
The night was also the moment I went up on the rooftop of our building.
On the rooftop, during day and during night. From there, we can have a glimpse of the Liberty Tower to the South, and the Chrysler Building to the North.
The rooftop, one of the places, with Central Park and the Sarah D. Roosevelt Park, I sat to write the postcards I’ve sent…
From the rooftop, looking to the West, during a cloudy night. Manhattan, a city that is so big that you could drown into it, but which also keeps some kind of… rustic look. Disturbing too…
4:00 a.m., time for me to get some rest before waking up, going to the 88 Orchard and start a new day…
The End.
This is it. End of the last episode, not without hours preparing it and drawing these good-looking maps… I hope you had the same pleasure reading, discovering the pictures and these places of New York that I had writing these lines and sharing this little piece of life.
See you soon, maybe, for the next travel. I have a few destinations in mind. Who knows where I’ll go?
To thank you for having read this till the end, I offer you an extra map. How? Haha, go back to the beginning, to the map, and you will see a fourth layer, a little notebook…
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