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Yesterday was a sunny Sunday so my man and I decided to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. This iconic stroll is among my favorite New York City activities. In fact, all my visiting friends are required to cross the bridge on foot when in town for the first time. As on most warm-weather weekends, the walkway was packed with cyclists, jogging New Yorkers, photo-snapping tourists, strolling New Yorkers, and other sundry characters. A promenade of different faces, from all around the globe, speaking in a multitude of languages. As always, it gave me such a buzz. At one point, as I looked to the right at the skyline of Manhattan, perfectly lit with late-afternoon hues, I just had to play tourist and take a photo.

That got me thinking of all the other times I snapped photos of Manhattan's skyscrapers, from various vantage points, in different moods and colors of the day or night. Like the one above, at sunset, taken in fall 2006 on the drive back to town from a weekend on Fire Island, one of my favorite city escapes.

Or the one below, taken on the BQE (Brooklyn-Queens Expressway), on the way back from a weekend up in the Catskills, the very same fall, 2006. The sky, the cranes, and the skyline.



Then there was fall 2007, when a Brazilian friend was showing her paintings in an art space in Long Island City and I snapped a photo of Midtown skyscrapers from Queens on a gray autumn day.



Later that fall, on a sun-drenched day, my boyfriend and I took a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge and found this vista following us as we sauntered.



And then there are the summer rooftop parties in Brooklyn. During one, at my favorite loft in all the five boroughs, I took the pic below. You see my dear friend Gary's rooftop, a bit of Bed-Stuy, and Manhattan in the distance.



Same rooftop, different evening, last summer, a goodbye party for yours truly departing New York for a couple of months.




Same summer, 2009, having a Cuban sandwich in Brooklyn's Sunset Park, admiring the skyline view many New Yorkers don't even know exists.



Going back in time... summer 2005. A friend from São Paulo is visiting. We walk along the Brooklyn Promenade at night. This is what we see.



Same summer. 2005. With the same friend from São Paulo. We're exploring the industrial wastelands of Red Hook, Brooklyn's harborfront neighborhood. Chatting to a fisherman... the skyline of downtown Manhattan across the way.



Yesterday. Unusually warm November Sunday. The vista off the Brooklyn Bridge. A reminder of why I still love my city.