Monday

We left the apartment in the morning and wandered around the block in search of breakfast. We stopped at Lenny’s and had tea and a muffin. Like so many places we find, it initially appeared to be an independent place, but then we saw 3 other Lenny’s throughout the day, so it must be part of a chain.

The street our apartment is on

After breakfast we wandered across to Central Park. We walked through Strawberry Fields and saw the John Lennon memorial.

Imagine mosaic

We stopped at the big fountain and took some pictures. While we were there we noticed a production company filming scenes for something called “Heart of the Country” (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2231251). We watched for a few minutes but we didn’t recognise the stars so we moved on.

We walked up Literary Walk and watched some quite rubbish breakdancers. They were rubbish because every time it seemed like they were about to do something good, they didn’t.

In Central Park

Filming in Central Park

Rubbish break-dancers

Literary Walk

Toward the end of the park we were taking some pictures when a very camp guy approached us and introduced himself as Wade. He was canvassing in the area for donations to a children’s charity. We stopped, gave him $10 and chatted to him for 10 minutes. He proceeded to tell us some very fanciful tales about his husband, the death of his mother, the charity he works for... apparently he was given the keys to the city until this time next year after winning a $250,000 donation for the charity. One of the perks is free theatre tickets, so he gave us his number and said to call him and he’d arrange some for us. As we parted me and Laura both exchanged a look which was “yeah – as if!”  We just couldn’t make our minds up whether the guy was genuine or not. The weird thing is, if he was trying to scam us, why would he pose for a photo and give us a phone number? Anyway, we shall ring and see what happens…

Wade...

As we left Central Park we saw the iconic 5^th Avenue Apple Store. It was very busy and as we didn’t need anything we simply descended the glass staircase, had a nosey and then came back up.

Next we went into FAO Schwarz. Now, I wasn’t expecting much from this Toy Store apart from the giant piano (from “Big” with Tom Hanks) but it turned out to be really good. They had so many cool toys in there and it just seemed to have lots of good quality toys. They also had a Muppet workshop where you can design your own Muppet and they make it for you. Fantastic.

We carried on walking down 5th Avenue, stopped for a quick photo opportunity outside Tiffany's and then carried on. We got a hot dog and a pretzel from a street vendor and before long we were at the Empire State Building.

We'd pre-paid for a NY City Pass so all we had to do was clear security and get our ticket. We upgraded from the standard 86th floor ticket to one that goes to the 102nd floor. We also got an audio tour with the City Pass and enjoyed listening to Tony telling us all about the history of the building and what you can see from the top.

The building is gorgeous and full of marble and lovely art-deco finishes. After reading about the construction of the building on the 80^th floor, we skipped the queue for the elevator and walked 6 flights of stairs to reach the 86^th floor.  The view when we walked out onto the viewing deck was awesome. We listened to Tony and admired the view for quite a while. We then queued for the elevator to the 102^nd level. The elevator is tiny and can only hold six people at a time.

Looking south to the financial district

Ever since I heard about the small viewing area on the 102^nd floor I’d wanted to visit it, so this was a dream come true for me. Stood there, admiring the view I wondered at the crazy architect who thought you’d be able to dock an airship there. Just the very idea seems absurd now.

Back at street level we grabbed some food at the Tick-Tock diner. It was a lovely diner full of neon and chrome. The portions were massive (as usual!) and Laura’s “open” steak sandwich was in reality just a massive steak, fries and a teeny bit of bread. I had a triple decker sandwich with beef, cheese, bacon, lettuce AND tomato, It was very tasty :)

After dinner we caught the subway down to Ground Zero. We had a pre-booked timeslot of 6.30pm to enter the memorial plaza where the two reflecting pools are and where the 9/11 museum will be when it opens later this year. After clearing security we were allowed access. Both me and Laura were quite conscious of the fact that thousands of people had died here and that this was a solemn place of remembrance. It was therefore quite odd to see people - families, kids, grans - posing with smiles on their faces to have their photos taken in front of the memorial pools. Seemed very peculiar to be doing a “this is me in front of the 9/11 memorial” sort of photos with a smile on your face. Anyway, we spent a while there and took some normal photos to remind us of what we saw. The pools are very effective at conveying the scale of the buildings that are missing. The names around the rim are also very moving. We saw a few names with the appendix “… and her unborn child”. Very sad.

South pool

Of particular interest to us was the survivor tree. Out of all the trees in the original plaza in 2001, this is the only one that survived. It was taken away and nursed back to health before being replanted at the memorial last year. You can see the point where the branches snapped and the new growth began. It almost didn’t get saved and re-planted as someone thought it would look out of place amongst the other identical trees. To me, that’s the beauty of it. It’s a one of a kind. The one tree that despite it’s scars, survived against the odds.

Survivor tree

The new 9/11 museum won’t be open until later this year, but inside we could just make out 2 of the massive “tridents” form the originals towers that have been installed.

Tridents

The new One World Trade Center tower looks very tall.

After all of that we browsed the visitor centre, read some stories about survivors and then headed home.

...but we made a little detour, via McGees. This is the pub is said to have inspired McClarens from How I Met Your Mother. Now, if you haven't seen the show then you probably won't really understand, but for us it was cool. 

Watching baseball

Note the picture on the wall of the cast of HIMYM in their booth...

We had a couple of drinks while we were there and watched some baseball in preparation for seeing a game for real on Tuesday night.