It’s July, it’s the hottest day in New York City and yours truly is not in air-conditioning, no!, we are walking through Central Park.  Welcome to 30 minutes in the Life and this is mine plus a few additional minutes 🙂

You may remember that I did a quick overview of the New York City trip.  Honestly, that was 15 of about 1500 images.  Since the Rochester training trip my life has got a little hectic and honestly I feel like I do not have the time to go out.  I have become in the last couple of months a workaholic because I know I have a deadline to pull together a brand new system and ensure that it is ready to go live before the end of the year.  No pressure here, but it makes it a little harder to get out and go walking in the city looking for photo’s to take.  Added to that South Florida is miserably hot.

Part of this day we planned to walk in Central park and then head to the Natural History Museum to cool off and spend the hottest part of the day inside there.  I think a million other people had the same idea.  So off we go, water in hand, camera bag on my back, and a bus ticket in my hand.  We arrive at Central Park and need to cross the road.  I have this image in my mind of looking up a New York City street with iconic taxi’s in my view.  Moving and taking pics is not working so I get to the side of the road and stop to get my images.

Lesson one.  When you are out with people who are not taking the same photographs as you, keep an eye on them.  Oh yes, I lost them. Of course, they did not keep an eye on me either.  They wandered off, not waiting for me.  I went down the way I thought I had seen Richard go.  Walked down this off beaten pathway with a stranger who also seemed to be “lost” and eventually came out at the through road.

Crossing the road, I discovered I was in Shakespeare’s Garden.  No family but the garden was really pretty.  So I meandered around the gardens, which I might add were really tranquil and finally decided that since I had not found them I should go back to the through road and try and figure out where the castle was.

I did not find the maps terribly user friendly.  The WhatsApp group had gone silent despite a number of messages being sent by yours truly.  Finally I stop at a concession cart and ask for directions on how to get to the castle.  The seller gives me directions and off I go.  Once again I am following a road blindly.  There were no directional maps nearby and my gps now tells me I have a long walk around the lake, so I plod on.

Just as I am passing Romeo and Juliet and then a major row of toilets, my phone rings (which it could have done far earlier) and it is Richard asking me where I am.

Umm, I am on the other side of the lake looking at Belvedere Castle.  Yip.  Probably if I had looked really closely, I could have seen them all glaring at me.  However, If I had gone the way they had gone I would not have seen then next few beautiful views.

Off I plod again.  I say plod because my feet are kind of sore already.  Remember that post op feet are still not what they should be.  They still get sore pretty quickly.

Finally I arrived the Belvedere Castle, to the faces of 3 unhappy people.  Oh well, you can’t win them all.  At least I got the spectacular (in my mind) front view of the castle over the lake.  I certainly enjoyed the views from the tower looking over central park.  Richard told me to walk through the castle, while my brother and his wife went walking down by the lake.

Once I was done we headed down to the lake and enjoyed the cooler tree covered pathways.

We walked back around towards the castle and up onto the lower level to take the short cut back to the main road.  Apparently the short cut that I should have taken.  I traveled the long road.

Richard went off to find the bathroom, and while I was waiting who should arrive but my brother and his wife.  So we waited for Richard before heading off again.  As you can see I quickly got behind.  This set the tone for the rest of the stay.  They walked ahead, I meandered, stopped, smiled and caught up.  They rested while waiting for me, so the minute I caught up they moved on – no rest for the weary that was for sure.

We did head back to central park another day but the upper end of it.  It wasn’t as interesting as the lower end to be honest, but there was one stop we made at a pretty lake.

So that was Central Park, done and dusted.  Did I like it, yes although it was a little stressful and seriously hot. I think we were all overheated.  Next stop was the Natural History Museum.  Richard is not a big museum fan and after 60 minutes I got a call to say he was leaving.  I kind of headed out as well.  We stopped grabbed some lunch and shade, tried the WhatsApp again for the other two but no luck, so we headed down to Times Square and Grand Central Station.

Thank you for joining us for another month of 30 Minutes. Just a reminder that this is a circle blog.  We have a number of new ladies join the 30 minutes group, making us now 11 active bloggers, and I would encourage you to take some time to visit my very talented friend Ceri Herd Photography and see what she has for you this month.  I am pretty  excited to learn more about these wonderful ladies from all over the world.  I would certainly encourage you to visit their pages.  If you have time I have a second blog going simultaneously of our trip to Staten Island.

At some point in your life, you tend to come up with a bucket list of things you would like to do, and you set out to achieve them.  Most of my bucket list has involved traveling, and we have done a fair bit of it.  We have traveled through Europe, done more traveling in the USA than I ever imagined us doing, and I still continue to look for places to visit.

One of the places on my bucket list for the USA was Niagara Falls.  To be honest I really did not think that we would get there any time soon.  However, 2 weeks ago my 2 work colleagues and I headed up to Rochester, New York for training for a program we are in the process of implementing in our offices.

I knew that if we were going to go all the way up there, we needed to make time to do the trip to the Falls.  We had to fly up the day before to be there to start training the next day at 9am.  So with some creative planning I figured if we caught the 5:30am flight to Rochester via Atlanta we would have enough time to drive to Niagara Falls and back before it was too late in the day.

The top of Niagara Falls looking towards Canada

The Canadian Niagara Falls skyline

Of course, I am the furthest from the airport, so I woke up at 3am and began my hour drive.  It becomes a very long day when you only get back to the hotel at 9pm but it was well worth every minute that we took to go out there.

On recommendation we decided to drive along the 401, the scenic route, through small towns and farmland.  The downside is always the changing speed but the towns were pretty and it was good to be able to see them.  Florida is one housing community after another and this was definitely a change of pace.

The day was bleak, cold, windy and overcast, which leaves the images feeling just a little gray.  My first view of Niagara Falls took my breath away.  The falls are amazing and the force of water going over the falls was just incredible.  Water is so incredibly powerful.

The size of the boat will give you some idea of the height of the falls.

This is the Canadian side of the boat ramps taken from the USA side.

Some moments you just had to stop and stare.  The image below is one of those moments.  Due to the wind there was a lot of water spray coming off the falls and it leaves this hazy effect.

I focused on the tree and flower, while looking at the rocky shoreline below.

The first bridge leads to the elevator that would take you down to the base of the falls, the second bridge is the gateway to Canada.

While we heard that the view from the Canadian side of the falls was spectacular, one of us did not have a valid passport, so there was no slipping into Canada to view the falls.  However, I suggested that we head down the elevator and take a boat ride into the bay.

Heading down, they hand out a Maids of the Mist rain poncho.  I was still messing with mine when we got on the boat.  Too much in my hand with my camera and backpack and rain poncho.

I realized that potentially there would be some water.  I have a rain sleeve for my camera.  What I did not realize was just how much water there would be and how misty the images would look, partially from the water in the air and partially from the amount was water sitting on my the front of my lens.

My thirty minutes technically ends here, but I did want to make the trip one blog post and so I have shared the rest of our days outing.

There was constant wiping of the lens, and doing my best to keep my camera dry.  I will admit I had a few worrying moments when my camera started blinking at me.  For a while I put it under my rain poncho and did nothing, but the beauty of the place had me pulling it back out again.

This is the walkway from the Cave of the Winds which gets you right up under the falls.  There is a cost to doing the Cave.  It’s not expensive, but there is also a cost to the boat.  That’s not expensive but it still adds up if you are watching your costs.  I opted not to do it based on the amount of water my camera had already seen.

We were seriously wet.  My colleagues managed to stay slightly drier than I did.  I found it difficult to try and focus on the camera and have the hoodie slipping around my face, so eventually I just lost the hood and decided to allow my hair to get wet.  I carry a mini brush with me so at least I could tidy up my hair at the end of the ride.

The last image before I put my camera under cover was this boat coming out of the falls.

Arriving back on the base we had the option to walk up this pathway to get closer to the falls.  At the base we were already getting wet, I could not imagine taking my blinking camera up closer to the falls.

Back at the top I resonated on what I had seen from the top and the bottom of these incredible falls.  If you have the opportunity to visit Niagara Falls, I would encourage you to do so.  We still had 1 hour and 45 minutes to drive back to Rochester.  We took the lake road, and so now at least I can say that I visited and touched the water of one of the great lakes, Lake Ontario.  To be honest there was not a lot to see along the lake road, but we happened to stop in one small town for dinner.  Being the planner, I researched the menu before recommending the stop.  I had a cup of lobster bisque to warm me up, and then my all time favorite calamari.  I have to be honest the last stretch of the road trip was catching up with me and I was happy when we arrived back in Rochester at the hotel.

Thank you for joining us for another month of 30 Minutes. Just a reminder that this is a circle blog.  We have a number of new ladies join the 30 minutes group, making us now 14 bloggers,  and so I would encourage you to take some time to visit my very talented friend Caroline of Elles & Eux Photographie , and see what she has for you this year.  I am pretty  excited to learn more about these wonderful ladies from all over the world.  I would certainly encourage you to visit their pages.