Sand Sea and Cupcakes!

I have just come back from a windy weekend in Whitby and as always I couldn't resist stopping at Robin Hoods bay. Lots of walking on beaches, wandering down narrow streets and of course stopping in nearly every tea shop we went past for tea and cake... well it was Jubilee weekend so I did have an excuse!

Happy Jubilee!

 Have fun whatever you do!

WTC Memorial Site

I really wanted to go back to see how WTC site looked now, I visited in September 2002 to pay my respects and it was so moving being there and seeing the devastation. I  never imagined that anything could be built on the site but the two memorial pools look amazing.
 Each pool is situated in the footprints of the two towers. Huge waterfalls encircle the pools on all sides.  The water disappears into black square infinity pits in the bottom of the pool.You cannot see the bottom from the edge of the pool. The pool edges are copper engraved with all the victims names. The sheer size of the pools were amazing, I felt so small at the edge of the pool, looking at the tiny people across give me a sense of the scale the towers had been. 
The most touching thing for me was the The Survivor Tree called  a Callery Pear which was found in the wreckage of the World Trade Center plaza, it was nursed back to health in a nursery, and  re-planted at the memorial plaza.  It was found alive  while the wreckage was being removed in 2002.  You can see the charred tree trunk at the bottom right up to about eye level. Above that,  all the new spouts have grown smooth. I hope this little but strong tree lives forever!

NYC

What a mixture of events on our trip to New York!
First we were delayed on the plane due to another plane pinching our parking bay (our Irish pilot wasn't happy!)
We had continuous torrential rain for 3 days which started leaking very heavily into the Jacob K. Javits Centre ruining quite a few design stands...and artwork!
Forgot the umbrella, (did manage to buy a cheap one off a street vendor which prefers to stay inside out) whilst in Times Square  my heel dropped off my shoe, had to hobble six blocks to Macy's for a new pair...I know any excuse.

Apart from that we had a good trip, met some lovely people, made some great contacts and ate nice food...and a few muffins chucked in too. I came across these graphics on the walls depicting NYC. The ink pen line work with blocks of filled in colour was so striking.