My extensive travels during the second half of this year continued into this autumn when I ventured up to New York City for the first time in a year and a half to visit a college friend.
Our first morning, we took the subway into Manhattan and went to the 9/11 Memorial. I hadn’t been there since 2014, when I visited the 9/11 museum. The 9/11 Memorial is two giant pools built in the footprints of where the Twin Towers once stood, bordered by black marble panels inscribed with the names of the 9/11 victims. Each pool is three stories deep and has water continuously flowing down the sides.
Even though I live in the nation’s capital full of monuments, this memorial is more profound to me since it’s commemorating something that happened in my lifetime. I appreciate how they chose not to rebuild on the exact plot of the towers. The pools echo the massive size of the buildings, something I never got to experience as a child.
Just beyond the memorial is the newer One World Trade Center skyscraper, the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere at a height of 1,776 feet tall. We went up to the observatory on its 102nd floor. The view was amazing, you can see an 360-degree view of all of the boroughs and landmarks. This was probably one of my favorite parts of the trip.
Afterward, we took a ghost tour in the West Village near New York University. The tour guide took us around the area, telling of stories like ghost sightings of famous author Mark Twain, and pointed out different landmarks, like the site of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory tragedy from 1911. It was fascinating to learn more about that part of New York City’s history, a change from the typical landmarks everyone’s familiar with.
Other excursions we did included a ride on the free Staten Island Ferry, which docks at the very bottom of Manhattan. As the ship pulled away from Lower Manhattan, we had a great view of the skyline, including One World Trade Center. We could also see the Statue of Liberty.
Another side trip was to Central Park to see the Balto statue – I’d seen the movie based on his story multiple times as a kid that shows the statue at the end of the film, so it was a nice, nostalgic moment.
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England Epilogues 