Ofcourse everyone has their stories for visiting a country. Ealier this year I went to the USA. For 12 days of joy, and especially fun, and finding out what my mum always meant with the States. My mum died 3 years ago, and since then I always want to go off to the US. To two places she loved, Orlando and NYC. For Orlando it was easy to find out what she loved there, Disney, she always was a big fan of Disney. As kids my brother&me always watched Disney movies, my mum also had a special deluxe white box set of Snow White, which she had to sell years before she died with pain in her hart. And then NYC, for a day. Yes, NYC visiting in a day! The first time my mum visited the States, alongside with my dad, they were both over packed due to all the presents they took with them. During 9/11 I did start watching TV after getting out of college, while zapping, I stopped on our national channel because of a plane flew into one of the twin towers. After about an hour my mum came home from work/shopping and I said if she knew what happened while pointing out to the TV, she almost burst out into tears and the rest of the day we watched TV. While watching she said how much she loved the Twin Towers, how much she loved and how great NYC was. And how much she wanted to go back. Sadly due to circumstances my mum never had a change to go back, or how NYC looks like now. As I never understood what she meant, the feeling she talked about it, how come she loved it? The original plan was to stay 2 full days in NYC and then going back to Orlando. But with flight tickets&hotel I only stayed a day as it was best option or if I booked a hotel I had the first flight back to Orlando. So I didn't do this.
After still having a big tiredness in my body of my flight from Amsterdam to Orlando and a 26hrs delay in Amsterdam I had to be at the airport at 5AM on Thursday(arriving in Orlando on Tuesday evening late). After 20 years my mum visited the States for the last time I was in two places she loved, she missed, and yes, that was hard for me. Here a little impression of NYC, I'll try to keep the photo's I made with the Pentax K200, but as I had two camera's with me, it is possible by accident, I put a photo made with the Canon powershot(standard digital camera) between the photo's:
Start:
55MM/F10/1:180
32,5MM/F4.5/1:1.80
Testing a Fish-eye lens, didn't buy it as it was too expensive for me at the moment and still 10 days left (the lens was all plastic, so had my doubts):
32,5MM/F6,3/1:100
End of the day:
55MM/F10/1:320
55MM/F16/1:180
18MM/F8/1:400
300MM/F11/1:1000, didn't get any closer then this to Lady Liberty, with camera or by walking in town due to time.
55MM/F11/1:500
55MM/F8/1:160.
A photo I don't want you to miss, but not made with a Pentax camera but with the Canon Powershot in a park near the Brooklyn bridge:
24,8MM/F5,6/1:160.
All other photo's in NYC are made with the Canon Power shot. So it means I skipped photo's of the 9/11 memorial where I spent almost 3 hours and Wall street.