The 911 Memorial Museum

Going to ground zero was the main reason all of us wanted to come to New York.

I visited the reflection pools a few years ago, and had been wanting to come back ever since to go to the museum.

It’s a somber experience to be walking around in the same area where our country was attacked and so many of our fellow Americans perished.

I had mistakenly thought that there wouldn’t be too many people at the museum on a Monday morning in October, but it was very crowded!

We fought our way through the crowd to pick up the audio guides to help us get the full measure of the many displays and artifacts.

Having so many people there made it difficult to stand still for any length of time to reflect on what we were seeing.  Sadly, the feeling of being pushed to move along did take something away from the experience.

After touring the 911 museum for a few hours, we made our way over to The St. Paul’s Trinity Church, which is across the street from the World Trade Center.

By some miracle, the church was undamaged during the 9/11 attack and became a haven for thousands of first responders during the recovery efforts.

The church was founded in 1766 and we learned that George Washington attended St. Paul’s to pray after being inaugurated.

Next, we grabbed a quick bite to eat at a small nearby restaurant called “The Apple Gourmet”. Nothing fancy but the food was good and not too expensive…considering we were eating out in New York City.

We went back to the trailer after lunch to let the dogs out and plan the next phase of our New York City junket.

Ken was pretty tired after walking in the museum, and New York isn’t his cup of tea, so he decided to stay at “home” with the puppies and Dick, Steve and I took off for round two of the tour.

I Want To See It All!

I expressed to Dick and Steve that I wanted to:

Walk in Central Park

Have a drink at the famous “Tavern On The Green” restaurant

See Trump Tower

Go to Times Square

and do whatever else looked interesting along the way.

So we took off at 3:15 to see how many of those things I could check off my list.

On the first trip over to the City today we took Uber, so this time we decided to take the ferry boat.

We had to hustle to walk the several blocks  to the ferry terminal to catch the boat leaving at 3:32pm.

Just as we got to the terminal, the boat was pulling away but no worries – the next one was only 6 minutes out.

The ride across the Hudson river was rough….good thing it only took about 5 minutes to get across!  The views were fabulous.

Once we landed, we got another Uber ride up to midtown to go to Central Park.

I really enjoy walking in Central Park. There are beautiful horses pulling carriages,  people on foot, on bicycles, jogging and dog walking.

It didn’t take long before we came to the restaurant.  The weather was quite nice, so we sat in the patio and enjoyed a drink and some people watching.

After having an enjoyable time at The Tavern On The Green, we took off once more through the park.  There are wonderful statues here and there – I liked this one celebrating sled dogs.

Our next goal was to walk to Times Square.  We took off on 5th Avenue from Central Park, and before long we came across Trump Tower.

A few blocks past Trump Tower we came across an even more impressive site….St. Peters Cathedral.

 

We continued our journey on foot, and before long we found ourselves at the famous Rockefeller Center ice skating rink. Of course, we had to stop and watch the skaters for awhile which was very entertaining.

Off we went again, still making our way to Times Square – our final destination.

We came across Radio City Music Hall, the NBC and FOX news stations and finally TIMES SQUARE…..yeah!

What a vibrant bright place this is!  It’s so hard to imagine thousands of people packed in here on New Year’s Eve.  It sure was fun to see tonight.

Of course, I couldn’t leave the City without getting a New York hot dog.  Please don’t laugh too hard at my outfit….I really didn’t start out the night wearing that hat……it was thrust on my head by one of the many New York City “hawkers” trying to make a few bucks….so what the heck….when in Rome.

We grabbed another Uber ride home and got in just before it started raining.

What a fun time we had!