Jing Fong - Dim Sum in NYC Chinatown

I didn't really know what I was in for when I joined my friends for lunch in Chinatown last weekend.  I had never been to a Dim Sum restaurant before, and I had no idea what it was.  Mary is of Chinese heritage, and she found the restaurant, Jing Fong, online.  It's located off of Canal Street and not far from the subway station.

Brooklyn Bridge

Wednesday, we took the subway to the Financial District.

NYC Times Square

The only other time I've been to New York City, I remember spending a good amount of time on Times Square.  Our hotel, the Westin, was adjacent to Times Square (we were supposed to stay at the Marriott Marquis, but there was some mix-up with the reservations... which ended up being fine because the Westin was super nice with Heavenly beds), and we rode the Ferris Wheel at Toys R' Us.  Anyway, when I think about New York, I think about Times Square.  Which is why it was incredibly weird for me to have been in NYC for five days, having yet visited Times Square (though I did see the Westin we stayed at when catching a cab one night).  So today when I had some free time, I decided that it was time to make a visit to Times Square so that I'd perhaps be able to better wrap my mind around the fact that I'm in New York City.



Okay, okay.... the real reason I was dying to go to Times Square is because since I last visited New York City, Disney has opened a store there.

New York City's High Line

On our first day of studio in New York City yesterday, we visited NYC's High Line Park.  I was familiar with the High Line after watching the documentary Urbanized (2011, Gary Hustwit).  The project is a really creative, innovative answer to both restoration and preserving history, as well as creating green space in an urban environment.  New York City's High Line is an elevated railway track above Manhattan's West Side which had become overgrown after decades of being unused.  In 1999, Friends of the High Line was founded as a community group to preserve the historic structure.  The High Line (first phase opened in 2009, second in 2011, and third currently under construction) is now a community park with landscaping designed by architects, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, and landscape architecture firm, Field Operations.  The High Line serves as not only a place of gathering, but a connection between surrounding buildings.  It's a really unique concept, and I quite enjoyed the execution of it.

Headed to the Big Apple!

Hello, again!

I'm disappointed that I fell off the blogosphere while in Italy because that was something I really wanted to keep up and do well.  One of the unfortunate things that I learned while studying abroad is that you can't do everything.  And I realized that I couldn't construct my standard image and description-filled blog post and still keep up with everything else.  So the blog was one of the first things to go.

I did have many European adventures that I intend to share here, and I'll post here and there when I have time to really tell a good story.  But as you might've guessed from the title of this post, I am headed to New York City for the summer!

This is another great opportunity that was available to me through the Clemson School of Architecture.  I'll be taking a 6-hour studio class and living in on-campus housing at Columbia University.  The professor is known for being tough, so I'm hoping to have a really good project for my portfolio at the end of the summer.

My flight is tomorrow morning, so naturally, I'm still not fully packed, yet.  And I decided that I needed to update the blog before I finish packing.

Speaking of updating the blog, this is something I plan to do much more frequently from now on!  I've decided that even if I'm just posting one picture with a little paragraph, it's better than letting my blog fall asleep, again.

So for now, I'll leave you with a photo of the gorgeous sunset over Genova's Porto Antico, taken from my bedroom balcony...