Monday: The UN, and Some Lower (East) Manhattan

These pictures go with this entry.

Monday morning was also overcast. I'd originally planned to go to the Upper West Side and get brunch at a well-recommended restaurant and then explore the American Museum of Natural History. I considered these a pair so when the brunch place turned out to be closed, I ditched this plan and headed back down to explore Lower (East) Midtown.

Walking east along 42nd, I passed Grand Central, the Chrysler building, a patriotic lamppost, and an assortment of other famous buildings. One of these, a building that is part of Tudor City, was interesting in its window selections: apparently there used to be slums and factories just east of it (between it and the East River), so they intentionally built few windows on the east side.

Eventually I came to the United National headquarters. At this point, I was no longer in New York City -- the UN headquarters is on international land not affiliated with any country. The first thing I noticed was that there were no flags on the famous row of flagposts in front of the headquarters building. Sad. (And I'm sorry I forgot to ask about this later.) The second thing is that there are a lot of nice statues symbolizing peace. The main building also had a nice exhibit celebrating indigenous peoples. I took a few pictures of paintings I liked (done by tribesmen in Brazil I think).

I took a tour. Mostly this was fairly unexciting and involved standing around in hallways and looking at posters promoting various UN goals (human rights, banning land mines, self-determination, peace, ...) while listening to my tour guide speak. I did, however, get to see the general assembly and another large conference room. But by far the most interesting part of the tour was the guide. She gave some really interesting commentary discussing UN strategy and relating the interactions of governments, the UN, and NGOs, and describing the relationships between peace-making, peace-keeping, and arbitration. Also, our tour guide was half-Polish, half-Ghanaian.

All this exploration of the UN took quite a while, so I went straight to work afterwards. On the way back, noticed a plaza near the UN had a lamppost sprouting international flags. Quite a contrast to the other flagposts a mere three blocks away.