I visited New York in September 2004, around the time of the anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center. A bit weird visiting the site, with the endless reading of the names. Life goes on though – shortly after stopping by the memorial, I was going on a free walking tour of Lower Manhattan. Highly recommended, you can learn a lot, in particular about the imagery of the sculptures on the old Customs House.
Plenty to do in New York – I think you could go to that one city for a month and not get bored. I even did the whole jogging around Central Park thing, since my hostel was right next to it.
One piece of advice – if you happen to be in New York, and you get sick, Sunday is the best day to be sick. That way, you can get the Sunday edition of The New York Times. It’s something like a thousand pages. I spent all day in bed getting through it. I thought I’d finally managed it, only to find a couple of sections the next day that had fallen under the bed. That is one big paper.
This first shot shows some of the imagery I was talking about – you can’t see it all that well here, but the lady represents America, while the head you can just see behind her right shoulder belongs to a Native American, with the scultpure representing the dominance of the invaders, repressing the Native Americans.
A couple of shots from Wall St. Take a close look at the first one, in particular the guy at the back of the shot, second from left, taking a picture. He’s got some fearsome assault weapon slung across his body, but a couple of tourists got him to take a holiday snap. Something about that just appealed to me.
Some classic shots of New York from the water – another great free thing to do is to take the Staten Island ferry across the harbour. Free, runs every half hour, gives you great views of the city from the water.
I couldn’t decide if this was sensible advice, or optimism. Seen on the outside of the ballpark on Staten Island.
Now I thought that steam coming up out of the street was just a movie thing, but no, it’s real
Some classic views of New York – from the Empire State Building, and in Times Square. Think you could handle that pollution all the time?
The USS Intrepid is a carrier moored in New York, which has become a floating museum. Very cool. A Concorde is moored next to it, and a submarine. Well worth visiting
