New York, New York ...

To see the complete picture set, click here.

I feel almost bad for not having shared before some highlights of my first visits to New York! I visited New York last December 2007 for 5 days, short time but what can I do!? It was primarely a work trip. However thanks to my amazing hosts (my cousin Reuben and his wife Perla) these few days were more than enough to discover the main aspects of the city!

New York Skyline seen from New Jersey

The city that never sleeps

It´s true, New York never sleeps ... I arrived from Colombia to NY on a saturday evening, that must have been 7.00 p.m. and I was a bit suprised when my hosts told me this same day we would start doing sightseeing, "bit late to be around", I thought. But no ... for NY standards seemed to be a perfect timing, specially during X-mas, that is one of the coolest seasons to experience NY. As a matter of fact, all the next photos were taken between 10.00 p.m and 1.a.m. (if a look kind of tired in some of them, now you know the reason!) and the city was as alive, as if it would be 10 a.m. in the morning ...

Walking around Rockefeller Center!

Discovering good street/junk food: Grays Papaya´s

Gray's Papaya is famous for its very inexpensive, high-quality hot dogs. The "papaya" in the name refers to the fruit drinks sold at the establishment, which include orange, grape, piña colada, coconut champagne (non-alcoholic), and banana daiquiri (non-alcoholic) in addition to papaya. Come on! even my beloved Carry Bradshow likes the place (I´m sorry, but I can´t hide that I love Sex and the City)!

Welcome to Times Square and Broadway!

Times Square is a major intersection in Manhattan, New York City at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue and stretching from West 42nd to West 47th Streets. Times Square has achieved the status of an iconic world landmark and has become a symbol of its home city. Times Square is principally defined by its animated, digital advertisements.Times Square was named after the Times Building (now One Times Square) the former offices of The New York Times.



Central Park

Central Park is a large public, urban park (843 acres, 3.41 km², 1.32 mi²; a rectangle 2.5 statute miles by 0.5 statute mile, or 4 km × 800 m) in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. With about twenty-five million visitors annually, Central Park is the most visited city park in the United States, and its appearance in many movies and television shows has made it among the most famous city parks in the world.

Don´t confuse me with The Apprentice!

The Apprentice is a television franchise that originated in 2004 in the United States. As originally conceived, the show depicted 16 contestants from around the country with various backgrounds competing in an elimination-style competition to become an apprentice to Donald Trump. The following two pics were taken right on front of two of the many (Donald) Trump Towers in NYC.

FAO Schwarz

FAO Schwarz is the name of a specialty toy retailer based in New York City. The New York City store, located in the General Motors Building at Fifth Avenue and 58th Street in Manhattan, is still very popular and a famous destination in the city. I seriously loved to go there, I have to admit I did not feel random taking picture is Bob Sponge or sitting down to design my own Barbie by computer ... !

And to prove that it was a work trip ...

The working reason of travellin got NYC was to make part of an Steering Committee of the organization I currently work for. We were around 10 people from all Latin America, Turkey and US mainly redesigning for one week the global IS tool we currently use. It was a great experience, since it was all about mapping the core processes we do and trying to figure out how a system could support us to deliver those processes in a more efficient and collaborative way. Below you can see the team (yes, we were on 2 girls, and precisely from Colombia) during one of our meeting in Manhattan.

A big Thank You

Even if 50 % of my travel I stayed in a hotel in Manhattan, the other 50 % I was hosted at my cousin´s home in New Jersey. I want to end this post thanking him, his wife and son for being excellent hosts and showing me the best they could New York and surroundings. I had a very good time and I really hope to come back some day to keep discovering NYC!