Photo Album

	Here is one of NYFD's fire tenders in action, the stars and stripes fluttering at the rear in memory of their many colleagues who died on 9/11.		Taxi, taxi, might be the title of this statue that I came across. Statues of this scale are to be found all over Manhattan, I rather like them and they remind me of Dublin's fair city.
St. Patrick's cathedral was New York's tallest building when it was built between 1858 and 1874. Now it is dwarfed by the adjacent skyscrapers of the Rockefeller Centre and the Olympic apartments next door. You can read more about it on the web site of the New York City Chapter of the American Guild of Organists
	I am particularly pleased with this interior shot of St. Patrick's (taken with a 20mm lens as was the exterior) because I managed to take it without a tripod and because of the beautiful balance of lighting between interior and exterior.		This picture I find quite surreal, an orthodox Jew stands at the edge of a sidewalk amid street furniture almost like chess pieces. I took this from the top of a tour bus.

 

Just a few stats about the Empire State Building for the curious:
It was built in just one year and 45 days, that's an average of 4 and a half stories per week	60,000 tons of steel, 10 million bricks, 6500 windows, 1860 steps, 73 elevators operating at speeds up to 1,400 feet per minute.
Estimated cost: $50 million. Actual cost: $41 million. How often does that happen!!	Building started on February 7th 1930. It was officially opened on May 1st 1931.
It was built on the former site of the Waldorf Astoria on a site of 2.66 acres.

some panoramic pics of New York can be seen here...

	A week or two after my first visit to New York, it was time to go again, this time to make the programme itself. Mr. Branson flew us there, with good service and timekeeping, but poor leg room,		In the  hotel, part of the 'Super 8' chain, I was on the 9th floor. I resisted the non existent urge to use the stairs.
This was the quick way to get to ground level; a postcard dispatched by the postal equivalent of a fireman's greasy pole.		This is Bryant Park, with the Empire State building in the background.