NYC Murals

I saw three murals in New York City that I hadn't seen before.

We saw this one from the High Line.

This is in Little Italy--fairly recent, it wasn't there on my last visit.

This one on Houston Street just cracked us up. It continued on to the right, but I couldn't get a photo of the whole thing.

Mosaics

I really like mosaics.  While combing through all the photos today I noticed that I had a lot of photos of mosaics, so I thought I'd group (some of) them together in one blog post.

 This bell was part of an intricate mosaic in a kind of water canal thing in the Botanical Gardens of Athens.

 Close up of a mosaic in the Vatican Museum.

A horsie in the Vatican Museum.

This reminds me of those framed prints you find at Garden Ridge or the like, except it is much cooler.

If it involves a peacock, I have to take a picture of it.

Ross's finger is in the photo here to give it some scale.  The pieces were tiny.

One of the angel mosaics in the rotunda of St. Peter's Basilica.

Tattoos!

I've been a little fascinated with tattoos lately.  I decided to give Ross an octopus tattoo on his wrist.  I used some of my dozens of sharpies to create his tattoo.  It is hard for me to believe it actually turned out looking like an octopus and not a purple sunburst or something.  The guys at his work all thought it was real, except for his boss--who noticed his arm isn't shaved.  Ross is a little bothered that Christiaan pays attention to his arm hair.

I was in a funny mood yesterday.  I couldn't think of something I'd have permanently etched onto my body.  Well, I'm obsessed with ginkgos, so I decided to do a ginkgo tattoo (or 3) on my forearm.  This is the one that turned out the best.  Unfortunately I drew the first one near my inner elbow crease--so now I have green smudges on the lower part of my bicep.  Oh well, it was all for fun.

NYC: Day Two

After breakfast (pastries), we walked over to ground zero just to see how things have changed since November 2009. There are a couple of buildings that have sprung up. Here are a couple of photos so you can see the difference.

November 2009:

July 2011:

We took the subway up to the street festival on Avenue of the Americas. It wasn't that cool. There was a lot of fair food, and the same stuff (Chinese imports) for sale on every block. I got something from a Turkish food stand for lunch. It was really tasty. Kind of like a Turkish burrito. I found a booth with printed T shirts that I really liked, but I decided to save my money for boots. Ross liked the sculptures at one of the booths. See photos:

We went back and Ross bought the Wall-E sculpture. I bought a 5 dollar scarf at the booth next door.