Pages

Monday, April 25, 2011

The City continued

Chris and I have both been to NYC before, but sadly, it's not Chris' favorite place in the world. If you can believe it, he's not a huge fan of the traffic, hustle and bustle, and sheer number of people that populate the U.S's largest city. Since we were already going to a wedding in the city so were going to be there anyway, he was a pretty good sport when I rattled off the list of things I wanted to do Sunday before we left :)

I've done a lot of the things people normally do when they go to the city to visit - Times Square, Central Park, Broadway shows, Empire State Building, the Rockettes, Macy's, etc. so I wanted to do the slightly more out of the way things this time: Battery Park (to see Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty in the daytime) and Ground Zero. Our hotel was pretty close to both of these things and since we had a LONG drive back home, we started out early.

We had breakfast in Battery Park. It was windy but a great morning for walking around the city. I was so glad we didn't have rain Sunday, too!

We took obligatory pictures with the Statue of Liberty over our shoulders.
And then we walked toward the old WTC site while just being overwhelmed at how huge every building in this city is. It is amazing how many people they can fit in such a small area when you just stack everything up! DC's skyline (if you can even suggest it has a skyline apart from the Washington Monument and Capitol Building) is nothing like this.

It's been almost ten years since 9/11 and the site still seems somber. I'm glad to see things are moving forward in that area. The second picture below is of the progress made so far on One World Trade Center, the first of the buildings going up on the WTC site.

After all that, we headed back to the hotel to check out and then hit the road home. Apart from some minor car complications on the NJ turnpike, it was pretty smooth sailing :)

6 comments:

LA-jan said...

Nice pictures! Would love to see NYC sometime. Thanks for the tour!

Elizabeth said...

glad you got to enjoy NYC! hope red thunder (and your other car) are ok!!

Rob said...

Did you know there's a reason that DC's skyline is unlike any other major city? It's called the Height Act of 1910, and it's meant to preserve the sight lines of all the federal buildings and monuments: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heights_of_Buildings_Act_of_1910

This in my opinion, makes DC's skyline far superior!

Katie said...

I actually did know that - I think my historically-inclined friend Maggie said that on a tour she gave us one time. It's fascinating and I agree, it makes it better. And much less crowded :)

maggie said...

I agree with previous commenters that DC's skyline is awesome! i'm always in awe of NYC, but feel so claustrophobic after a few hours of being there. I visited Ground Zero a few months back and got chills... hard to believe that was almost 10 years ago...

maggie said...

i agree with previous posters that DC's skyline is the best! i get very claustrophobic being in downtown NYC for too long. I did visit Ground Zero a few months ago and got chills... hard to believe that was just about 10 years ago...