I’d always wanted to go to New York in winter. I guess I thought it’d be romantic, sitting on a park bench in a thick, wool coat, watching the tourists and taxis go by. I have no idea what I was thinking.
Don’t get me wrong–I’m really glad I had the chance to return to the city, especially since my sister-in-law, Katrina, is there finishing her PhD, and because we also met up with our friends Mike and Cailyn, who just moved to Ohio. Of course, New York is awesome any time of the year. However, I didn’t care for the whole being-outside-in-the-cold-for-long-periods-of-time part. I put too much effort into trying to keep my coat and scarf over my face that I ended up with tight, sore shoulders. Besides, when it’s freezing I don’t like to take my thick mittens off and get my camera out of my bag, so I missed a lot of good picture opportunities. I cut myself some slack though, because I got sick the day we left home and remained sick the entire time. My focus–no pun intended–was to have fun and maintain a good attitude in spite of feeling under the weather AND putting up with a cranky three-year-old. So snapping photos had to take a backseat.
New York wasn’t our only stop this trip. From there we drove up to Ottawa, Ontario! I’ve been dreaming of going to an Ottawa Senators home game for a long, long time–we had hoped to go there for our honeymoon, in fact. So yes, we planned this whole trip around a Senators game! And since we had already come that far, we also planned to stop by Niagara Falls on our way to Erie, Pennsylvania. I attended Mercyhurst College my freshman year and I wanted to go back and visit my friends. Obviously, we don’t get to see each other face-to-face very often!
We made a list of places we most wanted to see and tried to hit up as many of them as we could. We knew we’d have one more day in New York at the end of the trip, but we wanted to keep it open in case we were exhausted from spending so much time driving. Eddie left most of the planning up to me (as well as Mike and Cailyn), since I’d been to New York before and he didn’t have any particular preferences. Katrina helped us break our list into manageable days, since she knew how long it would take to travel from one stop to the next. Her expertise as a local was invaluable!
One of the highlights from my first visit to New York included the Bethesda Plaza in Central Park (left), so I was excited to go back. Of course, this time it was crawling with tourists (including yours truly). During my first visit to New York, Ground Zero was still closed off to the public. Since then they’ve built One World Trade Center, the memorial, and a $4 billion train station and shopping center that looks like a ribcage, dinosaur carcass, or doves in flight, depending on who you ask. It’s called the Oculus (right).
I spotted this lone rose along the edge of the memorial. While pedestrians came and went, their lives briefly touched, somebody’s life would never be the same.
The 9/11 Memorial Museum is almost entirely underground (right). You walk down a ramp into this huge open space. I assume part of the reason for this design is to showcase the slurry wall, visible on the left. It was basically a massive retaining wall built underground to prevent water from the nearby river flooding into the foundation of the Twin Towers. Engineers worried the wall would’ve been compromised after the attacks, but it held.
My major in college was art, so I couldn’t leave New York without spending a considerable time at the greatest art museum in the country, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, aka The Met. We actually ended up going there three times! Some portions of the museum had been closed during my first visit nine years ago. I enjoyed seeing John Singer Sargent’s Madame X in person for the first time. I wrote a paper about it for an art history class.
My brother loves all things Akkadian, so I took some photos for him.
After The Met, we rode the Staten Island Ferry to catch a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty. I really enjoyed seeing New Jersey, Manhattan, and Brooklyn from the harbor (left to right in the photo below).
Back in Manhattan, we walked up to Wall Street and stopped inside Trinity Cathedral.
Picking up our rental car in Newark, we passed this graffitied delivery truck. The World Trade Center attack had been weighing heavily on my mind since we visited the memorial. It goes without saying that its impact on New Yorkers has been even more significant. It was moments like these that made me feel the most connected with the people around me here in the city.
We made it to Ottawa! I always surprises me to find Americans who don’t know that Ottawa is the national capital of Canada. We didn’t have a lot of time in the city, but we absolutely had to visit Parliament. We planned our visit to coincide with the noon carillon performance. Since this was the day we were going to the Senators game, I wore my jersey. The security guards inside gave me a hard time–they claimed that under every Senators jersey is a Maple Leafs fan. Never! I bleed red and black! (The Senators and the Toronto Maple Leafs are division rivals…and provincial rivals. We HATE each other.)
Free tour! The library was beautiful! We had to be absolutely quiet, and we had to make sure we didn’t photograph the librarians. Or the many armed security guards throughout the building. Or our tour guide (which was a shame because he looked like one of our friends from back home and I thought that was amusing).
We were able to visit the Senate chamber. I was continually surprised by how much more ornate the Canadian capitol building looks compared to ours in Washington, DC. In one way it looks more British (which makes sense), but it’s also its own thing. It feels smaller, more intimate. Kind of like, well, Canada in general. At least that’s my impression.
I think a couple of those guys in the distance (left) are security guards. I’m sorry! I tried to get a picture without them, but they kept moving around! Right is the ceiling of the Peace Tower. The view from the top wasn’t too special since it was a gray, cloudy day.
We crossed into Quebec briefly to stop by the Canadian Museum of History (formerly the Canadian Museum of Civilization). Unfortunately, it was closed for renovations, but the views of Parliament and the Fairmont Chateau Laurier (the white building) did not disappoint.
Another reason I wanted to visit the Museum of History was because I’d read it’s a fun building to photograph. I completely agree!
I wasn’t allowed to bring my camera into the hockey arena that night, but it was an amazing game! The Senators won 4-1 over the Pittsburgh Penguins! This was our third Senators game, so we were so excited to finally see them win!
The next day we headed out to Erie via Niagara Falls. American Falls (in the viewfinder) has many rocks at the bottom, and they were covered in snow and ice. It was the most beautiful waterfall I’d ever seen…for a few minutes. Canadian Falls is even more majestic. They’re not as close together as I had imagined, but I managed to find a way to get them both in a photo.
The sun was going down and I noticed Canadian Falls seemed to be brighter than it should be, given the fading light, but I couldn’t see where its illumination was coming from (you can just barely see it’s brighter along the top in the left photo). By the time we made it out of the gift shop, the lighting was much more obvious. Unfortunately our parking space was going to expire, so I didn’t have time to get a proper photo. It was beautiful, anyway.
Our last day in New York, we hit up the Brooklyn Bridge! This is another one of those places that you have to visit very early in the morning if you want to beat the tourists. Even so, it’s not hard to get a nice photo. I always thought you needed a special wide angle lens to photograph the cables like that. Nope! It’s not a trick, that’s really what it’s like!
After all this, we flew back to Portland. We had originally flown out of Portland because that was how we got such a deal on our tickets. So we had to go back there and get our car before we could drive home to Ontario. Unfortunately, there were ice storms in the gorge and we had to wait two more days before we could drive home! To make it more exciting, we had a semi truck pull into our lane without looking. Just once? No, at least half a dozen times! Thankfully most of them noticed before they hit us. Those who didn’t see us Eddie was able to pass, or slam on the brakes in time. Huge sigh of relief. You’d think people would be more careful in dangerous conditions! Anyway, we made it home alive! Hopefully we can go back and do it all again someday.
