05 April 2010

I fell in love...

For five days in March I had the opportunity to go to NYC for a journalism conference with the UVU Review & all I have to say is I fell in love with it & now I will likely move there. Allow me to take you through my trip. This may be length... but enjoy.
We were lucky enough to be staying in Times Square at the Marriott Marquis Hotel. We arrived and it was pouring rain... and some random person got in my picture.
We got all checked into our hotel & even though it was nearing late evening & it was raining super hard, we weren't going to let that keep us from the city. We were starving so grabbed some famous NY pizza (delicious by the way) and then headed down to the subway & took off to do some exploring.
The next morning it was still raining a little bit, but it was neat to see the fog cover atop the buildings.
We had the entire day to do whatever we wanted since our conference classes didn't begin till the next day. We all decided we wanted to go to the MET (Metropolitan Museum of Art) - this building is beautiful and huge. It was remarkable to stand and look at works of art by Vincent Van gogh & Pablo Picasso, paintings that were done so long ago, and I was looking at them in real life - remarkable, just remarkable.

On the fourth day I was there, a colleage of mine decided that we should try & get into The Late Show with David Letterman on standby. We submitted our names & headed down to stand in line after some morning classes.
We stood in the standby line for probably 45 minutes & didn't get in, but we did get to see Jennifer Aniston exit the morning taping of The Late Show with David Letterman which was really cool!

Since we didn't get into the show and we were already away from the hotel we decided to go see some more of the city. Here's what we found.
THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING!

For the next two & a half days we were in classes all day learning from amazing media personnel & got out to go explore the city as much as we could, but it wasn't until the last day I was there that I really saw the city.

It rained the entire time until the last day & I was ok with that, because what I saw the last day I experienced the last day was what made me want to move there.

The last day began by going down to the Today Show at 5:30am with one of the girls in my group & hanging out there until we got on t.v. - and yes we did! It was so much fun!!
Me & Merinda. Yeah, my sign says "Hi Mom! I made it to NY!"

NBC News Studios

After we got onto t.v. we were freezing so we left & walked back to the hotel. Later that day a couple of us were fortunate enough to get into a media tour at Marie Claire magazine - so we headed down a few blocks from our hotel & found the building we were in. It was right near Central Park and Trump Tower. We went on the media tour & met the lead designer, copy editor, a photographer, and an artist that work for Marie Claire magazine & they were all so fun & super down to earth - which was not something I expected, but people will surprise you.
Entrance to Marie Claire Magazine - Pretty snazzy!

At this point in the trip I was pretty down because I hadn't been able to see the city from above during the day. I had seen it at night from the top of our hotel, but I wasn't able to see it during the day, which has always been a dream of mine. As we were walking around the magazine office we walked into a room and were listening to the lead designer talk about the operations of the magazine when one of the guys in my group elbowed me & pointed to the glass windows - I was blown away by the view of the city. It was absolutely breath taking & I was speechless. Here are some shots I was able to sneak while they were talking to us, there not great because I just used my iPhone, but you'll get the picture.


Here is a few more of things we were able to see the last day - now mind you I took over 200 pictures while I was there, so there's plenty more, but I won't put you through any more than this.
Central Park! I LOVE IT!!

Trump Tower - HUGE

Statue of Liberty - Beautiful!

Ground Zero - very humbling & emotional

Manhattan LDS Temple - quite the experience!

I was fortunate enough to capture this moment while we were down at ground zero - this is my favorite picture of the entire trip.

Two ground zero workers taking a smoke break, chatting & perhaps reflecting on the events of nearly ten years ago.