Day 3: Empire State & Expo Setup

For most of the morning, we were waiting around for word on when Simon was going to be going to the Javits Center to set up for the Linux World Expo, that was occurring the next day. Finally, we found out that everyone was going to start setting up at around 2pm, giving us a couple hours to look around. We decided to quickly take a taxi to the Empire State Building. [map] The main floors and walls of the building were all marble. On the elevator ride up to the 86th Observatory, we experienced depressurization as our ears started popping. Finally when we arrived at the top, the view was just amazing. Although it was extremely cold and windy, we spent quite awhile walking around the outside observatory, taking many photos. We then decided to get in line to get up to the top observatory, on the 103rd floor and although the view was more spectacular, we were enclosed in a small place that had a lighthouse aura and scratchy plexiglass windows. Still, it was very worth it. After visiting the Empire, we went back to the room and Simon packed up and left for the Javits Center, for he was going to start setting up the Stormix booth for the Expo. He ended up staying there until about midnight, but the booth looked great for the next day's expo. Click on the thumbnails for larger images.

	The view you see when you get out onto the 86th floor observatory. The Chrysler building is that extremely pointy building in the mid-left part of the picture. We're looking North East in this shot, and across that bridge (the Queensboro Bridge) is Queens, NY.
	A fully zoomed out shot of the distance between us and the street below.
	A more zoomed in shot of the street below. You can see more cars in this picture.
	Looking south toward the Financial District. The tallest twin buildings near the middle of the picture are the World Trade Center buildings and if you look closely, off of Manhattan to the right is the Statue of Liberty. It was a tad hazy that day- either that or we were right under the clouds! ;)
	A more zoomed in shot of the Statue of Liberty, in the smack middle of the picture.
	Looking east into Queens.
	Another shot looking down, also zoomed in.