North America

Driving into New York was once very familiar to me.  This time the traffic seemed worse.  I dropped Wendy and the bags at the Holliday Inn, Times Square. Then my problem was to find a petrol (gas) station, to fill the tank prior to dropping off the car; followed by a three block walk back to the hotel.  That all went better than expected and we were soon out on the town for dinner.

The next morning, Wendy had some shopping to do, at Johnny Was, her latest go-to, so, I walked with her to the store near Columbus & 43, where I had a coffee and enjoyed being back in New York (top-left of the pictures above). 

Later we went down-town to ground zero, where the twin towers of the World Trade Centre once stood - until the 11th of September 2001. 

On that fateful day, Wendy rang me in Melbourne to tell me to turn on the TV, to see the south tower already hit by a plane. Then came a second, passenger aircraft, plunging in. 

Then a third.

Both towers now on fire. We watched in horror as hundreds of people leapt to their deaths rather than be burnt alive. Little specks. Then, in sequence, the towers pancaked down in a vast cloud of grey ash.

Before I arrived in New York our offices had been in the World Trade Centre but we had recently moved to W51st, mid-town. Nevertheless, I went there on several occasions, particularly with visitors to New York. It was a change from the Empire State Building and quite a different view.

The 9/11 memorial now occupies the the old foundations, a quarter of a mile below. The twin towers have been replaced by a single, taller, building: One World Trade Center, again the tallest building in New York.

The memorial goes to a great deal of trouble to record every single death with photographs and eulogies and names recited.  There are also selected 'shards' of wrecked equipment from the buildings and remembrance of the heroism of the first responders who lost their lives - a firetruck and so on.

The blue stripe across the image (second from the bottom- left) is made up of individual plaques recording those who died that day and the banner is a quotation from the Roman poet Virgil: "No day shall erase you from the memory of time."

On the surface, this seems a dubious quotation to use. No one actually remembers the Heros to whom Virgil was referring, except in myth.

Yet, it's certainly true at a fundamental level. Every person who has ever lived and died changed the present, simply by being, and thus changed the future of the world - as did Virgil's Heros. 

The future changed an awful lot that day.

 ***

Later, we went for a walk in Central Park and I went to the Metropolitan Museum - the Met - old familiar territory.  Wendy had more shopping to do.  I took a few photos that you can see by clicking on picture below (not as many as I took last time and probably a few duplicates).

There was a special exhibition of Dutch masterpieces. and the MET has, perhaps, the best early civilisations collection in the world.
Too much to take in.

Enough just enjoying the city. It was time to do something touristy, like going for a tourist boat trip on the harbour.  This was not something I did when I lived here.  It was a true tourist experience (rip-off) time wasting; manipulative; and a lot more expensive than the Statten Island ferry. But it served to highlight how much the city has grown and modernised since we were here in 2007. Spectacular. 

Later, we walked in SoHo and the Village.

You can see more pictures of New York, from our 2007 trip, by clicking on the pictures above

Needless to say we used the subway system to get around -  as almost everywhere in the world now - you buy a card and top it up as you go.  One big change, from the late 70s, is the lack of graphiti in the subway and the clean, stainless-steel, air-conditioned trains. Another, is a much diminished feeling of interracial tension when riding them.

Grand Central Station

Going to the Bronx - no worries.

What a city. I ❤️ NY.