A view from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade
Before I get back to my Turkish adventures I want to post a few photos I took of New york this summer. I really do love New York. I love the theater, of course (I saw The Book of Mormon and Anything Goes), and the availability of all types of food (had Thai twice and Japanese three times), but I think my favorite thing about New york is the variety of visual images. In the space of a few blocks you can see the ridiculous Naked Cowboy (a guy in his underwear with a guitar and a cowboy hat) in Times Square and the sublime Beaux Arts splendour of the Public Library at 42nd Street.
Bryant Park, with the Library in the background
At Bryant Park, the Library's back yard, you can grab a cappuccino and watch a chess match.I was staying with my friend Donna in Brooklyn Heights, just steps from the Promenade in an elegant 19th century brownstone. As part of the protected Historic District, these charming blocks will be around for a while, providing an oasis from the ever-present construction of characterless skyscrapers. And now that the Upper West Side, my old neighborhood, has morphed into a giant outdoor mall of chain stores, Brooklyn Heights is definitely where I'd like to live if I moved back to New York. But it would take an Act of God for me to be able to afford it.
Donna's apartment
Speaking of Acts of God, I wss in New York just in time for Hurricane Irene. The storm itself didn't have mu h impact on the Heights (being heights and all)and it would ha e felt like just another big storm had it not caused a shut-down of the entire Metropolitan Transit Authority. It also caused the rescheduling of my friend Amanda's farewell performance of her rock band, which meant I had to miss it. But I did get to enjoy a mohito and nachos with Amanda at a rooftop bar uptown on my way from Brooklyn to Pennsylvania on a beautiful post-hurricane humidity-free day.
I took advantage of the fact that I was staying in Brooklyn by checking out some of the local sights. I'd been to the Brooklyn Museum before, but there was a special exhibition of - wait for it- Art of the Muslim World- that I wanted to see. Antalya does have a substantial museum, but its focus is on Antiquities. I'm much more interested in the Ottoman period, so I loved seeing all the colorful tiles and ceramics in the Brooklyn Museum.
The Brooklyn Museum
Right next to the museum are the Botanical Gardens. Late August is obviously not the best time to visit; most of the flowers were gone. But there were nice green spaces.Brooklyn's Botanical Gardens
I also did somethings I'd never done in all my years of living in New York: I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge,and I took a picture of my favorite building in the city:
The Chrysler Building
And then it was time to leave before I forgot why I left New York in the first place.