I finally made it to New York City! My mom and I left the men to tend the children, hopped on a plane, and headed out to visit Eric. We arrived at night, and I just remember looking out the window of the plane and seeing lights go on and on forever.
When we got off the plane, we went straight to the taxi waiting area, where we entered our first car of doom. Every stereotype you've ever heard about cabby's is true. I thought either my mom and I or anybody in our immediate vicinity was going to die. And nobody speaks English. Or, as Eric put it: nobody that feeds you or takes you places speaks good English. He was right.
Eric lives in the heart of Lower Manhattan, in the Financial District: right across the street from a Trump Building, and right next door to Tiffany's. Amazing. Down there the streets are really narrow -- one way only. Right in front of his building, and the streets surrounding him, there is no traffic because the streets are blocked off. The only cars that can go through are delivery vehicles, and they can only go through once they've been searched by bomb-sniffing dogs. Then somebody hits the button and part of the street turns, allowing them pass the barricades. It's really weird.
Here's the view right outside Eric's fancy building (complete with doormen and marble walls):
And if you look left, you see this. That church down at the end is on Broadway. It's called the Church of the Trinity, I think. It has the most beautiful graveyard surrounding it. I LOVE graveyards. I love to walk through them, looking at the names and dates, wondering about who the people were and what they lived through. The older, the better. This church had to be rebuilt three times. It was built at first in the late 1600's, and then was destroyed in the fires of 1776. It's just about the coolest place I've ever been.
Because of the Occupy protesters (of which I saw none -- they've cleared out of that area, I guess), the police patrol on horseback. There are cops on just about every street, which made me feel pretty safe, considering the vast quantity of pedestrians that made me feel uneasy. Another thing that made me feel uneasy was being surrounded by monstrous buildings all the time. And then, Eric told us that ice falls off them during winter storms. Nothing like dodging killer ice cycles in Downtown New York.
Eric lives half a block from the New York Stock Exchange. A few blocks farther, and you find "The Bull". There were lots of Asian tourists taking pictures of it. I was the only blond. In fact, I'm pretty sure I was the only blond in Lower Manhattan. I was definitely the only blond wearing a bright lime green ski jacket, which is why I got so many strange looks. I felt like I was on an alien planet, but I was the one who looked like a martian.
And just past The Bull was Battery Park, which runs up and down the Hudson River for miles. You can clearly see Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. We took a few nice long walks because it was so warm, thankfully!
This is a view of the New Jersey side of the Hudson River.
This building is the old US Custom House. I loved the detail and statues all over it. You could see a brand new building just in back of it. That seems to be how all of the buildings were: old and new, or at least old and restored.
Just down the street is the building where George Washington took his oath of office. It was a really neat old building. There were lots of tourists always taking pictures of this, too.
Around the corner from Eric's apartment is the New York Stock Exchange, which is in another beautiful building, surrounded by stock brokers smoking their lungs out. You would be amazed at the number of people who smoke. We couldn't walk down the street without holding our breath.
This is the view of the Hudson River from the patio on the top of Eric's building. You can't even see the streets below because we were so high, and the streets are too narrow anyway. But in every direction, there's buildings as far as the eye can see. It's definitely beautiful in it's own way; but I prefer mountains as far as the eye can see.
This building just had a weird top, so I took a picture. Such a strange color.
Building a new skyscraper. That would not be my favorite job.
This is one of the new Freedom Towers they're building near the WTC site. This one is just about a block away, and the other is adjacent to where the North Tower stood. They are nowhere as tall as the buildings that were hit, but it is good to see progress being made on them.
Here are the pictures from the WTC site. We had to have reservations to get in (although it is free). We went through security screening that was just like in the airports. You walk around a huge construction site, where they are beginning to build where some of the other buildings that were severely damaged stood.
In the footprints of the towers, there are now huge water fountains. They drop 70 feet into the depths of where the lower levels were. Surrounding each fountain are the names of all those who perished in the attacks on the WTC, the Pentagon, and in Pennsylvania. Also included are the names of the 6 workers who died in the 1993 bombing of the WTC. Names are grouped together by what company they worked for, or what Engine number they belonged to if they were firefighters. Friends' and family members' names are right next to each other, as suggested by surviving family members.
The Plaza is full of trees that were planted pretty recently. After the towers fell, the immediate area was searched for surviving trees. Nothing in the Plaza survived, but three different kinds of trees were in the area surrounding the Plaza. They planted dozens of those types of trees for the new Plaza. They had also taken leaves off the surviving trees and made impressions of them, which they now sell in the Memorial building at the exit. I got one for Haley, and it's beautiful.
(South Tower)
This is the chopper that was made by the American Chopper guys. It sits in the memorial/gift shop at the exit, along with several other belongings that were found in the rubble.
We walked around the area for awhile, and found ourselves on the north side. We looked back and realized that in this empty space, you would have been able to see the North Tower, but it is gone. I'm glad they didn't rebuild right over the top of where the towers were. It's better to leave the space open, so that we don't forget.
