Day 221 - Balls to the Wall (St.)

New York City

We bought an unlimited weekly ticket for the subway and then caught it to South Ferry station. From there we took the free Staten Island ferry to enjoy a short cruise of the harbour with a good look at the Statue of Liberty as we sailed past. As it wasn't peak hour the only people on the ferry seemed to be tourists, and 99% of them just turned around and got back on again when it pulled into port.

We decided we should at least have a bit of a look at Staten Island so walked up the hill, we were hoping to stop somewhere for a coffee but couldn't find anything interesting, so we walked back and returned on the next ferry - maybe there's a reason everyone just goes back again

We then walked up to Wall St, we saw the Charging Bull at the beginning of the financial district, it wasn't hard to find but very hard to see as there were so many tourists surrounding it and bizarrely lined up to have their photos taken sitting under its testicles. If only we'd had the balls to do it as well!

We then walked across to see the outside of the stock exchange before heading over to the 9/11 reflecting pools. The memorial pools are at the base of what were the north and south towers, and the walls are inscribed with the names of the people who died. However they now expect that the number of people who have and will die from the after effects of the disaster will end up greater than the amount that died on the day.

We visited the museum underground in the basement of the buildings, the exhibition was huge, with displays ranging from twisted metal girders and crushed fire engines, to pieces of paper from the in-flight magazines that had fallen from the planes, and front pages of newspapers from around the world, including the Herald-Sun.

We then visited Time Square, it wasn't as big as we expected but still packed with massive screens on the sides of buildings advertising goodness knows what, and heaps of tourists like us gawking at those screens. Lots of advertising dollars, lots of technology, but I can barely remember what any of them were advertising.....

By this time the weather was also changing with it getting quite chilly, we weren't dressed for it as we thought the beautiful weather from the day before would continue, so we were still in shorts and sandals.