Peachtree City is a planned community outside of Atlanta. The best thing about it is all the track about the place that are for your golf cart! There is golf cart parking outside all the shops, and special bridges over the motorways.

There’s some pretty stuff though

Some other random stuff:

Took the subway and walked to the Bronx Zoo:

Bronx Zoo was kind of interesting, but also weird to have a zoo in the middle of a concrete jungle, as it were. Lots of the animals were not out in the open anyway as it was so cold (another -7 day).

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is amazing…. I only got through about 2/3 of the bottom floor before it closed, and I’m sure I missed lots of rooms. It’s quite crazy to be looking at a nice bowl then realize it’s not only from 4000BC, but that it was the actual bowl used by egyptian kings.

Rockefeller center

Times square again. Nice to see the military using a microsoft window to display a message. Also, the NYPD sign in times square is suitably neon.

Another day in the big city. As you can see, nice weather… but didn’t get close to 0 degrees all day… more like -7.  Eesh.

Took the train again, and this time I decided to be more ‘New York’ so I read the paper.

Brooklyn Bridge.

Downtown, including the blingin’ NY Stock Exchange.

Staten Island Ferry.

‘Ground Zero’ - not much to see.

Lunch in a diner. Awesome.

Lower West Side was cool - Soho/Greenwich/Chelsea - I could spend more time here…. esp if I had some money.

In the “file under ‘other’ ” dept:

(free delivery McDonalds!)

It was so cold today that the water coming down the pipes froze.

I’m not sure if it was tame or not, but this guy didn’t seem to notice the squirrel hangin out on his pile of pics.

Parking space.

yet another permanently going out of sale store.

I went to New York today. Lots of walking, and cold winds. I’m staying in New Jersey so had to take a train in…. wandered around and went to lots of places like 5th ave and central park….

Shops:

Central Park:

Museums:

(CooperHewett Design museum, Guggenheim, Metropolitan Natural History). The 2nd wallpaper is scratch n sniff!

Broadway:

other random stuff:

This last one is great cos it’s been there for ages.

Ice Cream with Phil and off to a$2 movie at the totally awesome Byrd theatre…

Complete with Wurlitzer organ player beforehand. Mean!

Also went to the Virginia museum of art, to see some paintings etc… including Monet, Renoir, Picasso etc etc. Nice.

Richmond is a bit of a historical city… some nice old buildings rom the Civil war era. It was the Capital of the Confederacy, and there’s still a lot of things here that hark back to those days… the massive statues to Civil war heroes… Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee.

Some of it is kind of sad… like the church built by veterans for their fallen comrades.

Holly-wood cemetery is the last resting place of many veterans, as well as some other famous people. We were there a little late, and it was a little spooky.

Richmond also has malls that look like this.

and a cool indoor soccer venue.

It’s hard to imagine a NZ version of this. Little versions of Helen or John?

Totally awesome advent calendars.

For those who like the band.

This is the nephew Soren. Sad and Happy versions

Charlottesville is pretty cool little college town… home of Virginia University, started by Thomas Jefferson himself.  They allowed black people there in the 60s… and women in the 70’s. It’s a pretty cool campus… including the old student rooms that don’t have heating, so they get left piles of wood outside their door.