A different view from the observatory

That's London in the distance.

The Canary Wharf neighborhood, which I remember as being nothing much, is now a new finance center. I would never have recognized this as being part of London if I didn't already know it was. Forty years ago, none of those buildings were there.

The building in the foreground, with the long rows of columns on either side, is a former royal residence called the Queen's House, which is now an art museum.

Whiplash

Monday morning I woke up to snow-capped mountains in the Beagle Channel.

24 hours and three flights later, I was dragging luggage through the deserted Miami airport. My flight landed at 4:30 am, which ought to be illegal, and it was dark and drizzly all day, which added to my sense of disorientation. Where am I again? Oh, right, for some reason, I'm in Miami.

I went for a walk and found a cafe with excellent huevos rancheros, but after that I just watched TV in my room and counted down the hours until I could decently go to bed.

Just before sunset, the skies cleared and I got my first look at the Miami skyline across Biscayne Bay. That's better, I thought, and was asleep within minutes.

Sunday bird blogging

A few seagulls following in the wake of the Staten Island Ferry yesterday, with the Manhattan skyline in the background.

The warmer than usual temperatures have finally cooled down enough to give us at least one week of perfect October: crisp but not cold, leaves turning, our sidewalk shadows stretching longer as the sun moves south.

Saturday reflections

This is a view of Midtown West in Manhattan. I'm not crazy about most of these buildings, but as a group, all that glass reflecting all that sky is pretty stunning.

Saturday reflections

The city at night, reflected in the glass wall of a hotel (plus a peek inside one of the windows.)

Urban poetry

A thin film of ice on the lake in Central Park. It's been so consistently cold that I'm surprised the lake isn't frozen solid by now

Urban poetry

This was taken through a window at Bar Sixty-Five above 30 Rock, so there's a bit of a reflection there, but it's pretty spectacular all the same.

We were in the middle of a dramatic thunderstorm, with lightning flashing through every window. No lightning in the photo, unfortunately, but I love those spooky skies over the Manhattan skyline.

Why I HATE crossing the Brooklyn Bridge

First of all, you never have it to yourself. Although the car traffic is on a lower level on either side of the pedestrian path so you have unimpeded views on both sides, the walkway itself is narrow and it's full of walkers, bikers, and lots and lots of tourists.

Then there's this.

The walkway is a little longer than a mile, but once you're actually on the bridge, the pavement gives way to wooden slats. And you can see the East River, far below, between the slats. The bridge underwent a complete renovation just a few years ago, so I suppose it's safe.

But it doesn't feel safe. It had probably been at least ten years since I'd crossed, and though I remembered that I didn't like it, I'd forgotten exactly how much. I really wanted to take pictures, so I gritted my teeth and tried not to look down, but my knees were literally wobbling until I was safely back on Manhattan asphalt.

Urban poetry

You can't get much more poetic than this; you definitely can't get more urban: the skyline of Lower Manhattan, as seen from the Brooklyn Bridge this afternoon.

I spent two days at a conference in downtown Brooklyn and because I'm too claustrophobic to take subways unless I absolutely have to, I took advantage of the warm weather and walked over the East River.

Rue Sainte-Catherine

Home again, and feeling as though I'd been gone a lot longer than a weekend. (The return journey clocked in at less than six hours door to door and was hassle-free.)

I did manage to see quite a bit of the city in my one full day and two halves, and finally understood a little of its charm, in a way that completely eluded me on my only previous visit. Yes, you can eat crepes and speak French -- and if your French is as rusty as mine, you have the option of switching to English halfway through a sentence with the confidence that whoever you're speaking to will do the same.

But Montreal is not a beautiful city. Except for a few streets in the Old City, most of the older buildings are stolid nineteenth century Neoclassical, and there's little that's interesting or eye-catching in the modern architecture. A lot of the city is a little worn down, and some of it is downright shabby. There are beautiful parks and excellent transportation, but once you've had your crepes and looked around a little, it's easy to leave without regrets.

This is a bit of the skyline from rue Sainte-Catherine, the major shopping street downtown, home to all the big department stores. It's Montreal in a nutshell: modern glass corporate towers crammed next to a picturesque old church and a topless nightclub. It's a jumble, and that kind of juxtaposition is part of what gives Montreal its very real, if elusive, charm. It's bilingual in more than language.

And maybe that sense of living in multiple worlds, where you have Rue Sherbrooke and Avenue President Kennedy and Tunnel Atwater, with your word order properly French but the words themselves often English, inspires the whimsy and sense of play that in the end makes Montreal so much fun. Or maybe it's just the long harsh winters.

I don't pretend to know, not after a weekend. But I did like Montreal, very much, this time around. I'm glad I went back.

Geometries

Another view of the Harbour Bridge in Sydney.

Auckland

Hmmm, I don't see an Opera House, but otherwise doesn't this remind you a little of...Sydney?

From a distance, maybe. On the ground, Auckland actually reminds me more of Toronto -- international polish on good Commonwealth bones -- with the bonus of that magnificent harbor. Or, rather, harbors -- Auckland actually has two of them.

Harbor view

Sydney is one of the financial capitals of the world, and it looks like one. Everyone talks about how ridiculously expensive real estate is, and how no one can afford to live here anymore -- the same talk that goes on daily in New York and London.

This is the skyline from the ferry to Manly Beach (this picture was taken from inside the harbor, which gives you some idea how enormous it is.)

Melbourne

After thirty hours in transit and that whole business of the missing Saturday, I am relieved to find myself more or less intact and on the correct continent. I am mostly going to be on a tour, as it's the simplest way to see as much as possible of this part of the world, but I am in Melbourne because it isn't part of the tour and even one jet-lagged day here seemed better than no Melbourne at all.

Or that was the theory anyway. I did walk around for hours while I waited for a call that my hotel room was ready, but I'm not sure I will remember much about it tomorrow, as the haze of jet lag is setting in on top of the bone-deep exhaustion from the long trip. Fortunately, I took a lot of pictures.

The bluest skies you've ever seen are in Seattle

Not true, actually -- it's warm and sunny here but also hazy, and I had to tweak this photo of the skyline to make it more than "Obscure bluish lumps behind the Space Needle". But one of the sad results of having grown up in the late twentieth-century United States is that I can always count on a soundtrack supplied by something I wish my memory wouldn't waste precious space saving. In this case, it's the theme song to Here Come the Brides, a short-lived television show that was cancelled more than forty years ago, which my brain has been helpfully playing nonstop in all its gruesomeness ever since I got here:

The bluest skies you've ever seen are in Seattle
And the hills the greenest green in Seattle
Like a beautiful child growing up free and wild
Full of hopes and full of fears
Full of laughter, full of tears
Full of dreams to last the years, in Seattle.
In Seattle!

It's hard to appreciate this lovely city when I am always mentally shouting, "Shut up!"

Totality

When I take many pictures on a trip -- well, when I take a trip, because I always take many pictures -- I catch up by backdating the posts to the date I actually took the picture. And I'll probably be adding more pictures to last weekend's Chicago Story, but here are two out of sequence.

So many of the pictures I took featured one, or two, buildings, soaring against blue sky as though they alone were the skyline. I like these two pictures because they give the context, the way the towers are shoved up against the river, the bustle and busyness of the many bridges, the boats on the water. It's a city, not a museum of architecture.

Let's just get this over with

I have enough pictures of Chicago architecture to keep me posting for the next year. So here's everything at once: the beautiful skyline on the lake.