Jeff Koons Balloons

Is it seriously the end of July already?! This summer is flying by and I can't seem to catch up. I did get a nice relaxing weekend - finally. The weather was warm, but not our typical hot and humid summer days. My and the boy took advantage and decided to spend the day in the city. Going into the city is the best in the summer, especially on the weekends. All the Manhattan-ites rush out on Friday afternoon to head to the shore or the Hampton's and the city becomes calm, well a form of calm, with less traffic and a little less crowd.

 

Saturday we decided to take the bus in, since there was no traffic but our driver had other plans. Now I have taken the bus an uncountable amount of times into NYC and it's the same route every time, traffic or no traffic there are no detours made. This driver took us up and down and around all over the place before heading into the tunnel and once we were out of the tunnel into Manhattan when the sign said "Port Authority Buses - Left" she went right. We went towards downtown, right on 33rd street then up 10th Ave then we stopped - stopped? Where the heck?! We ended up getting off the bus because I had had enough and I have been in this city enough to know I can get out and walk on this beautiful Saturday afternoon than drive myself nuts thinking about what this driver is doing.

 

I swear I am not a backseat driver. Swear.

 

As we started walking around, we came across the Hells Kitchen Market. I absolutely love little markets like this! You never know what you are going to find and even if you go back every week, there is always something different to see. Some call it junk, some call it treasure. We saw so many great things that were so old! And the gentleman who was working this stand had so many stories to tell about some of the pieces. It really makes you appreciate things more when they have a special meaning attached to them.

The boy really LOVES photography and has been getting pretty serious about it the last few years. We have been all over the place looking for old cameras and we always come up short or they are way too expensive but we have never come across something as amazing as this! There were so so so many old cameras that he just about fell over in love..shock..no definitely love. The pricing wasn't even that bad and I sure we could have negotiated something. Unfortunately, since we weren't expecting a market stop we didn't have any cash on us. :( Boo! But the market is here every week so we plan on taking another trip to pick up one of these bad boys.

 

Next stop, Rockefeller Center to see the Jeff Koons masterpiece! Jeff Koons is an America artist most known for his stainless steel balloon animals - or the Jay-Z song Picasso Baby "Jeff Koons balloon, I just want to blow up".  Kidding...kinda. Anyway, he put this scultpure of sorts in the center where the Christmas Tree usually takes it's place and it was huge! I know the tree is huge, as it should be, but this was a lot bigger than I had originally thought. The piece is called Split-Rocker, as you can see it looks like the head of a rocking horse split in half. Which is it, the left is the head of a toy rocking horse and the right is the head of a toy dinosaur and it meant to look ill-aligned and not perfectly symetrical. It is made up of about 50,000 flower and if you get close enough you can look inside and see an entire internal irrigation system to feed the flowers for the next several months.

 

 

I know all you OCD bloggers are going nuts that it is not perfectly aligned, and to be honest I wanted to jump up there are push that rocking horse's nose up to meet the dino, but it just makes the piece what it is. Just keep scrolling it's almost over. 

 

Some of you may have already seen this photo on instagram (if not you can follow the adventures @cdelv2) but I had to again show this cutie and myself in the center of it all!

 

Since the weather was so nice out we decided to walk around and we made our way down to The Highline. Surprisingly, many people don't know what that is. Thank god I'm here huh? If you ever visit New York you must take a relaxing stroll on The Highline. It used to be an old freight rail line that was converted into a public park. There are flowers and plants, grass areas and benches for anyone to come up and just get out of that "city" feel of things. Although you can still see the tall buildings all around you, it is just peaceful enough to almost forget you are in the concrete jungle.



As we were walking through, we found so much street art. Some call it street art others call it graffiti and mass destruction - to each their own. I call it street art and some of it is absolutely beautiful. When you begin to really follow artists who do such pieces, it is so fun to recognize their art throughout the city and all the hard to reach places they manage to get to. Here are some pieces we found just while walking The Highline.

That gentleman is not street art, but a street performer. It is amazing that you can visit someplace in New York a million times, and every time you go you will see someone or something different. We came across an amazing chello player while walking The Highline and he was just that...amazing. I came home last night and Googled him and apparenly he is pretty popular to passerbys.

The Highline left us in the Meat Packing District and we decided we were pretty hungry, so we sat down a little restaurant for some dinner and just enjoyed our city day as it came to end. I love coming here, and like I said, no matter how many times visit there is always something or someone different to see. I will never get bored of this place. Ever.

How was your weekend?!
Do anything different or the same or anything at all?!