A Visual Journal: Day 2

On day 2 we headed down to a wonderful restaurant named Manducatis in Long Island City. Leigh-Ann, our project leader, has a friend who owns the restaurant. The owner is a quintessential New Yorker with a wonderful accent. While we were there running over the program for the next couple of weeks the owner mentioned that she knew the man who's photographs lined the rustic brick walls of the restaurant. The man's name is Tony Vaccaro (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Vaccaro)

Then she called him up and asked him to come over. This guy was amazing! The wisdom he had about photography and how to get a great picture was so inspiring.

He’s photographed so many famous people. The one that caught my eye was the huge photograph of Georgia O’Keeffe.

After derailing the original program because of a wonderful close encounter with a legendary photographer, we headed off to the NYC Campus Crusade for Christ city director’s apartment. It was gorgeous. Unique art hung all over the walls and the views were of Long Island city and NYC. We were at least 26 levels up off the ground. We began to talk again about what the coming weeks were going to look like and managed to get done with everything two hours early.

We took a pit stop to Magnolia bakery before heading onward.

The evening’s merriment consisted of going to the Top of the Rock. I’d been to the Empire State building before, but this was great! The inside walls had huge panels of Swarovski crystals and three levels where you could view the city.

The group split up to go have dinner and my group headed off to the west village. I fell in love. Mom and Pop restaurants everywhere! Hardly any chain restaurants. Foodie heaven!