En route: memoirs from New York, part III

When I decided to end one day under the Brooklyn Bridge, whatever it sounds like, I went to the Brooklyn Bridge Park to photograph Manhattan at night. I met a nice couple there, with whom I had some witty conversations.

I spent the morning before last around the Upper West Side. On my way to the Riverside Park I got a bagel from the famous Absolute Bagels. Then I stopped off at the Columbia University and Harlem, to finally reach Central Park, where I saw Pierce Brosnan and got too starstruck to remember about the camera in my hand. On my way back home, I peeped at the Lincoln Center. I called it a day on a roof of a Brooklyn building.

On the remaining day I went to the Battery Park City, where the Financial District people seemed to be exercising in the sunshine. Then I found myself at the South Street Seaport, on the Williamsburg Bridge and back under the bridges to re-take some blurred night photos.

This is the last post of the 3-part travel diaries from New York, and simultaneously the whole En route series from the States.

I've truly enjoyed going through and editing the photographs. Although taken over two years ago, they easily helped me to recall some of the memories and write them down. Listening to the New York, I Love You soundtrack while editing and writing made the experience even more special. Speaking of New York, I Love You, what an inspiration, I love every single minute of this film. Even though it appears to be quite difficult to choose my favourite segment, I really adore the one directed by Allen Hughes with Bradley Cooper and the amazing Drea de Matteo, or Yvan Attal's scene featuring Robin Wright Penn and Chris Cooper - with No Surprises by Radiohead in the background, its romanticism always makes me cry.

To sum up, no other place has ever evoked such enchantments in me like New York. There's that rightness about this place justifying each of its characteristics, bad or good, like every part of the city happens to be there for a reason. Dirty or clean, old or modern, quiet or loud, slow or fast-paced - the contrasts make it hard to categorize, intriguing, diverse and charming. I think that is partly why NYC gives a genuine feeling of belonging, because every type of human could find a place within its borders that would suit his or her personality pattern.

Its cosmopolitanism makes you feel like no stranger, equal to other dwellers, with own story, either you feel like devouring the city's splendour or just like hiding from the whole world.

The city speaks through arts and culture, which makes it cult. Greenwich Village reminds me of Friends, beige tenement houses with cute apartments - Girls, Midtown - Woody Allen's Annie Hall, buildings with fire exit ladders - Rent, skyscrapers - Mad Men, and Central Park means nothing else than Angels in America.

All that tells me simply one statement. New York has become my dream destination, and living there an aspiration to be finally fulfilled one day.

The Only Living Boy in New York by Simon & Garfunkel