We couldn't celebrate our successful trip to Harlem forever. After nap time, it was back to the subway. It's funny that after just a couple of hours in New York, I was already feeling disappointed that I hadn't seen any of the things TV had conditioned me to hope for in the Big Apple--e.g., spontaneous rap battles or, I don't know, a mugging. (My boss Tami gave me plenty of advice about what to do if I was mugged. "Give the wallet, but throw it on the ground. Throw it on the ground and run!")
Luckily my disappointment quickly dissolved, when on the way to BatteryPark, a troupe of breakdancers came into our train, turned on their boombox and started showing their stuff. I wanted to take a picture but was too busy trying not to get kicked in the head as one of the dudes was backflipping one inch away from my nose. (Click here for a similar performance.)
Even better, over by the harbor boats, I watched as a half dozen fake-designer-bag salesmen deftly rolled up their entire inventory in seconds and took off running down the street when the cops headed their way.
I also ate a subpar, street-vendor hotdog (Traci had a pizza pretzel. It was the most disgusting thing either of us had ever eaten), so I was able to knock out most of the NYC cliches in just one afternoon. Oh, and I also watched two harbor tour security employees get mad at each other, with the female employing yelling, "Somebody better hold me down. Hold me down!"
Once on the boat, we had a very nice trip past the Statue of Liberty and a enjoyable visit to Ellis Island. We found that Traci's great grandmother passed through there. Traci thought about paying to have the folks at Ellis Island print her off some genealogical records, then felt guilty about not just going downtown and doing the same thing for free at the Church History Library.
Before heading back to Midtown to meet Noah and Allison, we walked past the construction site that is Ground Zero and to the storefront "WTC Memorial Preview," where there are some 9-11 tribute pieces as well as some renderings of what things will look like when all is complete in 2011.
1 comment:
That picture of the WTC memorial gives me the heebie jeebies. That is where I was last year when I lost Addy (1.5 years old) for about five minutes (which felt like forever). It was awful. But I thought the museum was done very well.
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