Getting acquainted with Manhattan - NYC Day 2

"Is it true that NIKE is almost bankrupt???"...

....I ask the young salesman in the NIKE shop on 5th avenue in an attempt to make conversation with a "real" New Yorker. He just came back from wherever they store their shoes, with an armful of runningshoe-boxes. He looks very embarrassed and one of my inner voices yells at me:"Are you nuts????? How can you ask him that? This guy works here, is very happy to have a job, and what do you know about this anyway???"......I blush and awkwardly try to explain that this is just a vage rumour I heard a couple of days ago in Germany. What I don't tell him is that I heard it from my mother who is certainly NOT the greatest international economy-observer, and that I forgot to ask where she got this information from in the first place. So much about Andrea and smalltalk.

We do not dwell on the subject. Among several pair of shoes I chose one of the less expensive and flashy pairs, leave them on my feet, meet my husband at the cash register, he too has new shoes. We pay. We came in worn-out tennis shoes (which we leave in the fancy Nike shop, no regrets). Now we are ready for the streets of New York.

Later we catch the bus on 5th avenue, not far from Central Park, at a bus stop at Bergdorf/Goodman. I should have taken a picture of their windows full of wonder (=designer clothes...). No price tags visible, so not to put fear into the potential customer (not me:).

I did take a picture of a TIFFANY window, attracted by a collection of keys. They say:
"Tiffany Keys. A magical collection of key pendants brimming with intrigue and allure..."
Some are brimming with what looks like diamonds, but I'm more interested in the effect "key-abundance" mixed with the reflections in the window.

The bus n° M5 takes us down 5th avenue, and we get off somewhere near Washington Square. I'd like to see the Arc de Triomphe which I often glimpsed in movies set in NYC. It looks just like the "little" Arc de Triomphes in Paris! Makes me feel at home:).

...Below now you find a condensed description of our day. Yes I know, these posts are "huge sandwiches", (quote Klaproos). But I feel that I have to write it all down and give it some time and space before it can be reshaped by my visual mind into something else than words...

I don't know, this is probably too much. I mean too many pictures.

Perhaps you are not as interested in seeing:

me tired and excited at once, buttering toast on Monday morning in the Edison Café, or fire escape ladders, sheriffs' cars, hot-dog-stand-operators putting the American flag up in the morning.

Colorful fruit-trucks standing under this typically American red light in front of this incredibly curved skyscraper reflecting buildings in a completely different architechtural style...

The windowcleaners high up there cleaning window n° 105, the Tiffany-Window with yellow keys and cabs, our new shoes against asphalt, the corner of 5th Ave and 32 street, the Arc de Triomphe on Washington Square.

The empty bar in Greenwich Village where they serve wonderful Espresso, the cozy shops, streets and house-entrances there, more fire-escape ladders (I admit, this must be an obsession of mine as are the yellow American school buses which I just looooooooooooooooooooove!) and....

Times Square, again, there's always something on Times Square catching your eye or your camera-lens...
(coming soon: The story about how I met Kim)

Oh and one last thing: I got bored putting my watermark in the right bottom corner of each picture, so I just melted it in, my way of digesting New York City, hope you don't mind:)

Click to enlarge (with some it works, with others not, will try to be more professional about it next time:)