Anna and Latoya, final part

NYC.

Insanely lucky as we are, we had the most amazing places to stay during our entire trip and our luck reached another peek in NY. Our friend Nate Naylor (one of the most amazing people on planet earth) offered us a place to crash in his awesome pad in Tribeca, Manhattan!

Nate also found some spare time to show us around, so we rented bikes (as the Dutchies that we are) and we cycled all around New York. At night Nate would take us to dark cocktail bars in basements and made sure we had the best food possible.
In daytime we made sure to get some cultural education, went to the Moma, the Met, an exhibition by Ryan McGinley and the national history museum.
We got so wrapped up in all of it that we nearly lost Anna in a Monet painting.

The next couple of days are kind of a blur. We lived on cocktails, coffee, burgers, NYC air, love and cigarettes.

And then it was Anna’s birthday which we celebrated in style with an early morning underwear dance, night time surprise cakes and way too many drinks at the Bowery…

On Saturday we went to Le Bain, friends of ours from Amsterdam were DJ-ing there that night and they put us on the guest list.

What happened next was as perfect as it was unexpected; Anna fell in love. On the second last day of this unbelievably blessed trip through America this girl managed to fall for a DUTCH guy, the DJ (who she actually already knew from back home for a really long time).
Because drunk and wet and wrinkly from dancing in a pool all night did not seem like a good combination or state to shoot photo’s in, we will have to keep these memories all to ourselves

While Anna was floating on butterflies, Latoya spend the next day with her two old friends Jeff and Lotte in Brooklyn.
We walked around in their neighborhood and ended up at Coney Island, on a ride that has been there since 1926. It would be fun they said. We would be fine they said.
Later on, when our stomach was so turned upside down that sitting was the only comfortable way of being we googled this little monster ride and found out that in its history at least 3 people had died in it. It explained a lot…
When walking became a possibility again we decided to go for one last dip with our old friend ‘the ocean’.

Our trip was coming to an end. Even though we made loads of plans of changing or missing our flight we eventually ended up leaving. After packing our overly stuffed suitcases and drinking our last coffee, we headed to JFK. Last cab. Last NYC air. Last USA day. First time being sad on this trip.

To kill some the sadness and some time on our 7 hour stop over in Oslo, we came up with the insanely good idea to use Anna’s mom’s credit card to buy a bottle of Jägermeister. Each. And because thats just how classy we are we also stole some wheelchairs to have races all over the airport, which was perfect cause:
A: it is fun
B: the alcohol in our blood made us sleep all the way from Oslo to our beautiful Amsterdam.

It wasn’t until we arrived back home that we realized how fast these last days flew by, and noticed that we hardly shot any photos on our last week.
Maybe that’s a good thing, when life is so full that there is no time to capture the moment, cause you are too busy living it.

Luckily we shot a bunch of analogue shots that we would love to share with you now that we’re back home and had time to develop them all, but first:

A massive thank you to Nevada, California, Arizona and NYC. Thank you minivan, highway 1, route 66 and all the dust in between. Thank you Burning Man and all the bright souls that we were lucky enough to meet. Thank you Bright Eyes, Iron&Wine, Balthazar, Dave van Ronk, the Avett Brothers and even freakin’ Nickelback (again sorry). Thank you ocean, desert, mountains, lakes and pool parties on the 93rd floor.

So America, guess this is goodbye for now.
We are coming back for you though, how could we not; you are the love of our lives.

More work on www.latoyavandermeeren.com