El Retiro en mayo

It's amazing how quickly time passes by. In the blink of an eye, 2013 has come and gone, and I am still backlogged in terms of editing photos from 2012.

As I found some time and determination to edit old photos, I came across these gems that were taken on one of my last days in Madrid back in 2012. I can't believe that it's been almost 2 years since I was last there... My Spanish is so ineloquent now!

And now, I present you: El Retiro en mayo.

The Retiro has its fair share of peacocks and the like.

There was the most adorable little girl with her grandfather curiously following a male peacock around...

La Rosaleda, the rose garden was blooming at that time of year

Just overall a wonderful place to be in the beginning of summer.

I miss this.

A Day in the City.

New York City is definitely one of my favorite cities in the US... Why else would I have spent every single one of my past seven Thanksgivings here? So when my grandparents wanted to visit, I was more than happy to accompany them and explore the city further.

Here are some photos from a day during our week in the city.


Battery Park is a fantastic place for squirrel-feeding. A lady there feeding squirrels was incredibly nice and offered us some of her almonds to feed them. My grandpa got a little excited and had squirrels climbing all over him... I know they are considered vermin to many, but come on... They're so cute!

Then we headed off to the 9/11 memorial. Very beautiful and peaceful place. It was also very cool to see everything being rebuilt around the memorial.

A picture of me taken at the old World Trade Center in front of the new 1 WTC.

After quite a few days of rain due to Tropical Storm Andrea, the weather was cool and walking around during that time of the evening was very comfortable. Hope the weather stays that way!

We ended up in Chinatown and went to Joe's Shanghai. Though we got there at 9pm, it was super crowded and the wait was really quite long. Food was decent... Not the best Chinese food I've ever had in the US, but good. During our wait outside we had some fun with my camera...

I simply cannot get over how wonderful the bokeh on my sigmalux looks... Favorite lens for sure!


I'm hoping to post some pictures from my trip to South America soon. Let's hope I have time to work on them!