A new kind of adventure...

I awoke today at 5 AM. No, wait, that's wrong. Let me start again. At 5 AM, I was still lying in bed, awake. I decided I wanted to alter my schedule a bit to allow myself to see more than a sunset's worth of daylight each day. The past few days have been awful on my psyche. So, at 5 AM, I threw away all hopes of getting to sleep at a decent hour and got out of bed. The logical thing to do was to sit up for a few hours on the computer reading blogs and refreshing Digg, but I'm determined to defeat my SAD, so I hopped in the shower and got dressed...

At 5:30 AM, I left Knoll Court and headed to the Millennium Bridge to watch the sunrise. As I was leaving the building, however, I realized that the sun never rises in Newcastle until about 7 AM (I know this from being up full nights and going to bed as the sun rises), so that gave me an hour and a half to wander the streets and find things to photograph. It's strange what you find lying around a silent city before dawn...
I say silent city because after about 2 AM, nothing in all of Newcastle is open for business (except 24 hour Tesco's) and everybody is either asleep or being quiet in their houses. I walked along Quayside and through Eldon Square, the two busiest places in the city, and there was nothing...
The Quayside...
and Northumberland street. Here's what it looks like in the middle of the day, as a reference...
So by this time, the sun was ready to come up. I decided to walk about a mile and a half to what is, in my opinion, the best view of the city. I stood at the middle of a bridge and took pictures nonstop for about half an hour. It was amazing...
Yeah, it was awesome...

Having completed my mission, it was time to return home, but not before walking across the city to take a stroll through the mall, where I finally saw another person...
Going to the mall was only to rest and get warm, the real reason I walked across the city was to get to the market just as it opened, where I could buy sausage and eggs fresh off the truck. I don't remember the last time I've had a proper breakfast, so I bet this one will be damn good. Also, because I've stayed up all night, I should be able to fix my sleeping schedule within the next couple of days..:-)

-Matt