Things I learned in New York

You can fit five (large) adults in the back seat of a hire-car… not something I hope to repeat in the near future though!

New York drivers speak to each other in code by honking their horns. Apparently it’s an official language.

“Watch yer heid” in broad Scots is understood in any language, especially when the tour-guide is standing up on an open-topped bus.

Laughing hysterically whilst using Snapchat sitting in a bar draws eye-rolls and looks from the younger generation who are probably all going “Check out the old dudes learning to face-swap”.

If you keep your eyes closed on the taxi ride from the airport it doesn’t make it any better – I’m still traumatised!

The Empire State Building is NOT the Eiffel Tower, no matter how  many times I called it that.

This isn’t the Empire State woman, this is the Statue of Liberty.

I get confused at my age….

 

 

New York New York

New York – how do I explain it to someone who’s never been before. Big, yes. Noisy, yes. Crowded, yes. Expensive, Hell Yes! It’s almost as if someone from every country on Earth has been pushed into this small island (Manhattan) and they’re all in Times Square at the same time!

Did I like it? Yes and no. Parts of it were fantastic, parts of it not so much. I didn’t like Times Square at all but I loved some of the other areas.

Anyway what to blog about from my time there…. it’s got to be people. I took SO many photographs of characters walking along the streets, from a naked Wonderwoman (body-painted) to a man in a bright yellow zoot-suit, but unfortunately I haven’t had time to process the shots yet.

So here is one of the few shots I’ve uploaded from my camera. Hopefully next week I’ll get a chance to check out the street-life shots.

“In New York
Concrete jungle where dreams are made of
There’s nothing you can’t do
Now you’re in New York
These streets will make you feel brand new
Big lights will inspire you
Hear it from New York! New York! New York!”

Thank you!

Thanks, Merci, Ta, Cheers me-dears, or in my adopted country’s language “Thank y’all” This is my American accent incase you didn’t quite pick that up (all my attempts at accents sound vaguely like Klingon)

What am I thanking you for? Well I now have 100 followers on this silly little blog of mine!

Woohoo!!!

I’m overwhelmed that so many people like my blog enough to want to follow me, although I’m pretty sure some of them clicked follow by accident, but hey, I’ll take what I can get!

When I started blogging it was because I wanted more out of photography than I could get from Flickr. Flickr is great, and I still use it a lot, but I’m becoming more fond of blogging now because I’m not restricted to posting my best photographs and I can yap more on here. Sometimes a phone snapshot is enough to illustrate what I’m blabbing on about. Take this shot of my dog for instance.

Dawg, always ready to party!

Taken on my phone and not Flickr-worthy but certainly blog-worthy because it makes me smile. This is him celebrating my birthday btw. He’s such a party-animal (no pun intended).

Anyway thank you again, each and every one of you who takes the time to read the nonsense that comes out of my head and to look at my photographs. I love y’all *sniff*

 

Stormy weather

It’s spot the crazy foreigner time… we’re the ones out in the storm going “Ooooh! Ahhhh!” whilst the tornado siren is going off in the background. The first time a tornado warning went off after we moved to the US we went rushing out to the deck with our ice-creams to watch the sky.

Actually these photos were all taken from a moving vehicle – don’t worry, I wasn’t driving – so the quality isn’t the best but it was such a cool storm I had to snap it.

Love the storms we get here in the Mid-West. They’re so…. trying to think of a good word for it…. monumental. That’s a good word! But most of the time they bluster out in about an hour or so.

Anyway we beat it home – my mum was driving like a bat out of hell. She didn’t want her new car to be dinged by the hail!!!

Had to post-process at least ONE of them with a bit of OTT Photoshopping.

As a PS, I know tornados and storms are not a laughing matter for the people affected by them so no offence meant.