Today, I trek out in the cold on the 1 train uptown covering stops from 116th Street to 191st Street. This stretch of stations was a great treat for me. Alot of different stations and each area provided some very interesting surroundings. The first stop at 116th was a pretty traditional station however when I walked outside I was familiar with the area because I live only a few blocks away. The 116th Street stop is Columbia University. It is such a beautiful campus to visit as well. At this point I decided to walk to the next stop because I knew up ahead was a great view of the trains going in and out of the 125th Street stop. The 125th Street is really beautiful. It is an above ground stop and the architecture around this stop is amazing. The skyline of the buildings show this is an older part of New York City that still has its old school charm. I love this part of the city. It is soo "real" to me. There is also some artwork in this station titled River to River, Wopo Holup done in 1991. It is cast stone relief and ceramic tiles. 137th Street is the next station and also the stop to City College. This station is quite different as well and has beautiful pillars throughout. Also, the artwork at this stop is called Fossils by artist Steve Wood in 1988 which are cast bronze relief tiles. 145th Street was typical but the area around peaked my interest. Walking out the subway I saw signs leading to the Riverbank State Park. I had no idea this park even existed. This is what I love most about this project. I find out about things I would never know about otherwise. It is a scenic park that when you walk out to the viewing landing you can see a perfect landscape of the George Washington Bridge. This park as an ice skating rink, a music venue, sports courts and a restaurant. Such a great place and I hope to show my sister this treasure uptown. 157th is the next stop and was probably the must uninteresting out of all the stations I went to today but still the signs of the 1 line always present some artfulness. 168th is one of my favorite stops because it is truly an older stop but the architecture is timeless. I have seen this stop before because you can catch the C train here as well. I was impressed with it then and still impressed with it. I love the bridge you have to take to get from the downtown to the uptown platforms and vice versa. The one thing I don't like in this station is the fact that you have to take elevators and elevators only to get to street level. It kind of freaks me out. I couldn't deal with that station in the middle of the night. 181st Street was laid out the same way as 168th Street with a bridge to get back and forth from each platform and also the elevator situation. Weird thing about this station was as I stood on the platform I kept smelling chlorine. I felt like I was near a swimming pool or something to that effect. Also, as I reached the street level the area was Washington Heights and as I was walking through the station I took some pictures as I always do. However a gentlemen stopped me because he thought I took a photo of him and wasn't happy about it. I told him he was not in the photo at all and that it was just the wall I was taking. I have never had that happen to me and it scared me a bit. But I just put it behind me and moved onto 191st Street. There was plenty of artwork in there as well one installation called Primavera by Raul Colon. I have a picture of the first installation of his work which is a ceramic mosaic mural. However, I couldn't figure out how to get to the other one. It seemed like it was closed off but it is two faceted glass panels, cut and faceted by hand. On my travels uptown next week I might stop off and see if I can get to it. The next piece of artwork is this long walkway to the exit. There is no title for it and it was done in 2008. One side of the wall is blue and the other green and there are a number of different images throughout. It is really an amazing walkway to go through. The other way to exit this station is yet another elevator. This time however there was an MTA employee who regulated the elevator and was soo nice and would always say "Hola" to everyone and to have a nice day. Obviously everyone speaks Spanish in this area. Once again I felt like I was in another world. This concludes my journey today and next time I will be finally completing the 1 line.