NYC's Street Vendors

As you'd imagine, I've been going non-stop at sorting and processing my NYC pics! Donica left for Amsterdam yesterday while I stay on the home front, keeping watch over our house getting a new paint job (exterior). She'll return the Mother's Day weekend, after which we'll both return to A'dam.

As I sort through the pics, different themes come to mind that I can group together for you here on In Soul (for my photoblog, it's only one pic/day!). This is an easy one so I'll do this one next: NYC's street vendors.

In no particular order, these stands can be found just about anywhere...

Newspapers and magazines

I guess they go together: hot dogs/sausage and pretzels!

A guy on my photoblog made me promise I'd eat a hotdog from off the street. Well, I ate a sausage instead that actually looked and tasted more like a hotdog, so I think it counts. One of our tour guides said she eats one once a year and then just plans to be in the bathroom the rest of the day. Donica and I had not a whit of trouble. :)

See why they're called "street" vendors?!

I think after 9/11 everyone DOES *heart* NY.

One of our nights we 4 girls (Ruth, Lesley, Donica and I) ate in Little Itlay where I saw this creative vendor. In between customers, it's a nice social hour for the vendors.

Yup, they even come with scales to weigh whatever, in this case fruit. And yes, that's Donica, always having to wait for me (but we were waiting for a green light anyway!).

Especially in Central Park there are art vendors but this was somewhere else, caught at a stoplight while on one of our double-decker tours.

I've saved my best for the last. Can you tell why it's my favorite? HA! Yes, that's my school. Gotta love anyone wearing a MICHIGAN shirt in NYC. So of course I had to do my selective coloring: maze and blue.

Later I'll show some of the other landmarks you'd expect, but these street vendors are NYC landmarks in their own right. Don't you agree?!

[The NYC pics I'm showing now on my photoblog, starting today, are in a larger format and different from these, if you're interested.]

The Girls in NYC

Let's start at the very beginning!

It's a long story that involved the original possiblility of 5 adults with luggage and how do you fit all that in a taxi! So Donica had reserved a limo beforehand to surprise my sister, Ruth, and her daughter, Lesley, at the airport when we all arrived that Saturday (the 21st) around noon.

Ginnie, Ruth, Lesley and Donica
It was Ruth and Lesley's first limo ride. And with it Donica ordered a bottle of champagne, which we easily finished off in the 30 minutes from the airport to our hotel! (DUH!)

In front of our hotel, on 34th and Lexington, where Donica and I spent the week, was this fabulous photo op. Were we ever ready to hit NYC and paint it red!

As you see, there were photo ops all over the place. Donica and I are both taking pics of Ruth and Lesley giving scale to this very important concept. I don't know when this "statue" was erected but I think NYC has become a city of LOVE since 9/11. We talked to tour guides who said the city has a different feel today than pre-Twin Towers. I totally believe it.

Ruth (from our home state of Michigan) was with us for only Saturday and Sunday, so we made sure we saw what SHE wanted to see. Since Sunday was Earth Day, the 22nd, it was appropriate that we spent most of the day in Central Park. And yes, we were as touristy as we could possibly be.

Lesley is holding her mom's hand on the horse-and-buggy ride. I have never seen such a loving Mother-Daughter relationship. Now that Lesley lives in NYC, she and Ruth are separated most of the year. So this was a joy for Donica and me to observe how demonstrative they are with each other. Maybe they got specially "zapped" on that LOVE statue!

If you haven't been to Central Park, you wouldn't believe it. SEEING is believing! Even though we didn't see all 843 acres of it, we saw enough to amaze us. I know it has had its reputation of crime in the past but not today. With 25 million visitors per year, with only 100 crimes now per year (as compared to 1000 in the early '80s), it is one of the safest parks in the world. We were there on a warm, spring day when it felt like the world was celebrating Earth Day!

Of course, we tired ourselves out! We knew Ruth would be leaving too soon! Earlier in the day we had been to the Top of the Rock at the Rockefeller Center, 70 stories up, where we had views of the whole city, including Central Park. So we really did tire ourselves out before we went to dinner and said Good-Bye to Ruth.

Lesley, Nathan and Nancy
After Ruth left (some people have to work, of course!), we still had Lesley the rest of the week (even though she had to work as well). On Tuesday evening we had a fabulous dinner at my nephew, Nathan, and his lovely wife, Nancy's apartment near Central Park. Nathan is ordained and is working in a ministry to high school prep students. He said he would gladly be called "one of the girls" for this post. What a guy!

On Wednesday night, Donica and I took Lesley out to dinner before seeing "Wicked" on Broadway for her 26th birthday (which happens to be today!). Lesley took this pic of the 3 of us with her cell phone before the play started.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Lesley!

These are just tidbits of one aspect of our week in NYC, related to all us girls! We actually spent time with Lesley on 5 of our 7 days, visiting her and her boyfriend at her apartment in Queens on Thursday. We don't normally go on a vacation week and have family nearby (unless we're going to the family cottage in Michigan, of course). So this was was an extra special vacation!

More impressions of the Cig Bity (as my mom called it) to come! But I definitely had to start at the very beginning. :)