New York, New York

Yesterday we went into Manhattan and spent all day. We left in the morning at 9 and returned around midnight. We´re staying in Queens which has a subway line that makes its final stop at The World Trade Center, so we went to Ground Zero first. The area remains fenced off and is still a hole in the ground that causes the heart to ache, but it is much more of a
construction site. There were seven buildings that made up the WTC and unbeknownst to me three have been rebuilt. I took time to look at all of the buildings on the periphery and noted that several are still being repaired. It was decided this week that the building formerly occupied by Deutche Bank was too contaminated, could not be salvaged so it is now shrouded and will be dismantled piece by piece over the next year at a cost of $25 million. More than once I looked up into the blue sky from different vantage points knowing that four years ago today I could not have seen it.

We took the subway uptown to the Metropolitan Museum, which sits on Fifth Avenue at East 82nd and Central Park. We walked many of the galleries and enjoyed every hour. We walked through Central Park toward its south side, ate hot dogs in transit, bought an 8 x 10 pen & watercolor of three Mongolian horses and then caught a double-decker tour bus. It was nice to see various sites and architecture (Broadway, Madison Square Garden, Times Square, The Empire State and Chrysler Buildings, The United Nations, Greenwich Village, SoHo, Chinatown, Little Italy, the East Village) while hearing the guide's patter. When we got to Battery Park we hopped off and rode the Staten Island Ferry roundtrip. It took about an hour, was free of charge and gave us beautiful views of the Statue of Liberty and Lower Manhattan. We hopped back on the tour bus and rode it back up to Central Park South. We wanted to eat Italian food for dinner and went back to lower Manhattan by subway to Mulberry Street in Little Italy. We had a nice dinner and then took two subways back to Queens. It was a good day.

I'm not sure what we'll do today. We don't need to be at JFK until around 4 p.m.

Tomorrow we'll be in our beloved Riumar! More from there.