Statues and More Statues

So my American friends, you might call this cheating. The second entry of my travel blog is about New York City. It's true I've grown up in the shadow of this city, but excuse my bias if I believe that it is the most well know city in the world. (And if you don't excuse me, fine. But remember I am only ABOUT to leave North America for the first time, so perhaps you can at least pity my severe traveling handicap.)

The truth is that Luke came to visit me on Long Island, and while all I wanted to do was eat egg sandwiches, drink Blue Point beer, and lay on the beach all day, Luke wanted to go to Manhattan and do as many things touristy things as possible. So we spent one exhausting day in New York doing just that and I realized that I might be in a little trouble with three weeks of sightseeing ahead of me.

The first and most important thing on Luke's list (and yes there was a physical list) was to see the Statue of Liberty. Believe it or not this would be only the second time I've been to Liberty and Ellis Islands. I was excited because my brother told me that you could now go in the crown of the statue, something you haven't been able to do since 9/11. Unfortunately, due to my poor planning skills ("...we'll just figure it out when we get there, I'm no tourist!") we found out after we had already been standing in line for 20 minutes that there were no more tickets available to walk up to Ms. Liberty's crown. Apparently you need to buy those in advance. (Who knew?) We almost ditched the whole idea (you can see her from the mainland with a zoom lens, right?) but decided that $12 was actually a decent price for a closer view of the iconic statue, and admission to the historic immigration building, not to mention three ferry rides in New York Harbor. (By the way, $12?! Yup, way cheaper than the $22 I paid this May when I went to Alcatraz. Take that San Fran!)

Liberty Island has great views of both the city and of course the statue, but unfortunately has very little literature about what you are looking at. All along the pavilion they had signs posted every 50 meters or so, but they were just THE SAME TWO SIGNS over and over again. "The Statue of Liberty was actually designed by two different people...." "Here are some artifacts that inspired her portrayal..." you'd think the national park service would have more than 4 paragraphs of information about the most well known Statue in the world! (O.K., O.K., second most well known, I'll give you Michelangelo's David.)

As disappointing as the lack of documentation was, I did find these lovely little statues portraying the designers. Artistic statues of statue artists. I like it! (One in particular is perhaps a bit foreshadowing?)

For all the time we spent at Ellis Island I have very few pictures of it. This is mostly because the museum had a ton of reading material, and not a lot in the way of eye candy. Despite this, I regret not taking more pictures because I found the main floor quite comical. It was full of giant and in many cases 3-dimensional multi-colored histograms, maps, and graphs. It was as if this conversation happened during the planning stages:

Museum Planner: "Seriously, what is exciting and grabbing about immigration?"
Historian: "Well I've always been fond of the demographics involving...."
Museum Planner: "Great! I've got four other museums to plan today so let's move this along. How can we represent demographics?"
Historian: "I don't know, graphs?
Museum Planner: "Really....? Graphs? "
Historian: "Ummm... really big graphs?"
Museum Planner: "....."
Historian: "... really big 3-dimensional graphs in bright colors?"
Museum Planner: "Great! I love it! Nothing says U.S.A. like overstatement! Now, where are we going to put the 30 foot American flag made out of faces?"



(Important full disclosure note: I ripped the two photos above from travel.webshots.com to make my point. I promise I will not make a habit of this. Give me a break, I'm new at this!)

So roughly four hours later we were tired and quite hungry so we subway-ed our way to John's Pizza on Bleecker street (another item on Luke's to do list) and had some absolutely amazing no nonsense pizza. Even Vanilla Ice says the their pizza is "dope." I think Luke was impressed. Look at him folding his pizza in half like a true New Yorker!

After pizza, we decided we weren't full enough and went in search of some of Junior's famous cheesecake (yet another list item) and found that one was located in Times Square (strangely NOT on Luke's list). Luke claimed that Times Square was "sensory overload" and was not particularly interested in spending too much time there, however he did insist that we get our photo taken in front of the statue of the infantry chaplain "Father Duffy." I was a bit perplexed by this since neither of us are in any way religious, nor are we really all that supportive of war efforts in general (I know... are we even Americans??), but as you can see I complied.



Speaking of being American, what do you think of this souvenir I found?
I know, awesome right? What does Maple Syrup from Maine have to do with the Statue of Liberty? I have no idea. I love it though. In fact this product has inspired me to look for other such ridiculous souvenirs in the cities I visit over the next few weeks. We'll see if Geneva, Paris or Prague can top a 12" glass Lady Liberty filled with brown gooey sweetness.

The Beginning

I have always wanted to start a blog. Even as a kid I wanted to author some kind of life-inspired-picture-word creation. At the time all that existed was scrapbooking, and if you know me at all you would agree that I don't have the patience or artistic talent required for that sort of endeavor. So I settled for dutifully writing in a journal, and taking a ridiculous number of pictures at every opportunity in the hopes that I would someday (after retirement perhaps) connect the two into a published work (or at least a bound one). But seriously, Al Gore invented the Internet back in 1999, why has it taken me a decade to start a weblog? Mostly it's because I am slightly neurotic. I couldn't start this blog without without thinking of an appropriate title. I felt like the title needed to encompass all of who I am and what I would have to say in one beautifully perfect phrase. I struggled with it for a while not getting anywhere, and then I remembered my favorite excerpt from Douglas Adams's Restaurant and the end of the Universe.

Context: A group of utterly useless individuals have crash landed on a planet with nothing but their jogging suits, and are trying to reinvent humanity.

"And the wheel," said the Captain, "what about this wheel thingy? It sounds a terribly interesting project."
"Ah," said the marketing girl, "well, we're having a little difficulty there."
"Difficulty?" exclaimed Ford. "Difficulty? What do you mean, difficulty? It's the single simplest machine in the entire Universe!"
The marketing girl soured him with a look. "All right Mr. Wiseguy," she said, "you're so clever, you tell us what color it should be."

Not wanting to be the butt of the joke, I decided to suck it up and just settle on some sort of title. Unfortunately, this still proved to be a difficult task (neurosis is a bitch!) so I decided to hold a contest to name my blog. Really. I know, I'm ridiculous. I promised beers and a cake to the one who could think of the best name. I got a grand total of two entries. I took this to mean that the name wasn't important and that I was making a big deal about nothing, but perhaps it also speaks to my cake making abilities. Finally, I decided I liked the word "nutate" suggested by a friend and well, I'm a sucker for alliteration.

Now to be serious for a second (just one I promise), I've had a rough year. Nothing too horrible, but life changing just the same. I've been avoiding my old journal, the one I've kept since I was 16, the one with over 1000 pages, the one I tried so hard to finish and came within a mere 20 pages of doing so. It was an old book, a different tone ran through it. I was questioning, always questioning, never stating, never demanding. I don't want to talk to that journal anymore. It knows my ways, it's tired of my empty promises, those not empty of intent, but strength; conviction.

I am new. I am done waiting, I am done compromising. I am who I have always wanted to be. I am in control. In 10 days I leave for 3 weeks in Europe. I have never been there.
I bought a new journal in anticipation of this trip, but my journey has really already started. It's bigger than that, I'm not sure how long it is, I'm not even sure what it is, but I do know... I am excited!