Thursday, December 24, 2009

Xmas in New York

Last weekend I went to New York for a Christmas shopping and musical weekend with Ian as well as to escape the "blizzard" that was forecast for Washington that Saturday (as it turned out, D.C. got about 20-24" of snow and, predictably, the whole city shut down, including all buses and above-ground Metro trains, and even on Monday, the federal government closed all offices because of snow). It was a fun weekend, even considering the 8-10" of snow that made its way to New York City on Saturday night (the original forecast had the snow curving out to sea and missing New York).

Snow or not, New York is always fun in December. Here are a few shots around town during the snow storm.

Macy's

This is Macy's on Herald Square, with the Empire State Building in the background. We shopped in Macy's for a while, and it was a good thing, since the next day, they had an escalator fire and had to close down the building for a while (and I bet a lot of the clothes and things smelled smoky after that, too!).

tree

It was snowing to hard to get a good picture of the tree, but this is Rockefeller Center. We didn't stay out too long. The horizontal snow was starting to hurt our faces due to the already-fast winds being accellerated in the wind tunnels of downtown skyscrapers.

chestnuts

Here are some chestnuts roasting on an open fire at one of the street vendor carts.