lower manhattan

Weirdly, I hadn't become properly acquainted with Lower Manhattan before this weekend. I'd visited Ground Zero and taken the Staten Island Ferry, but I hadn't walked the distance in between.

What was a mistake! As Emma and I discovered, the area's buildings and parks are gorgeous and historically interesting.

Our sustenance:

Terrace Bagels = NOM NOM. Boiled and baked, as bagels should be. Einstein's will never be the same to me.

Ground Zero: Because it's presently a huge construction site mostly obscured from view, I don't have any photos of Ground Zero, but we started there.

Almost eight years later, the city hasn't forgotten September 11, 2001. FDNY firetrucks list the names of their ladder's fallen, murals visible from the subway announce "Never Forget," I even saw a simple mini-memorial tacked to a tree in Brooklyn.

And New York's mourning was never more palpable than at the giant construction site, a gaping wound in the city's structure.

While standing at the memorial on the side of Ladder Ten next to the WTC site, I saw a firefighter watching from the window. Though none of us could have known what he felt, for a moment we were companions in mourning.

Trinity Church: Built in 1846, Trinity Church sits at one end of Wall Street. Its Gothic architecture contrasts starkly with its finance-house neighbors; seeing the church is stepping into a different era. Alexander Hamilton is buried in its 300-year-old cemetery.


Wall Street: I bet seeing the "world's financial capital" on a weekend is starkly different than on a week day. The empty banks and New York Stock Exchange seemed to symbolize the current financial state. For the future of my unpaid student loans, here's hoping for an upturn!

Emma photographing the New York Stock Exchange. She was so excited to see the buildings she had studied in her classes this semester.

Stone Street: Dating back to the 1600s, Stone Street was supposedly the first paved street in New York. It's closed to traffic and now occupied by a good deal of outdoor restaurant seating. It's rare to see streets like these preserved in the city.

Photo by Complicated, Flickr

Battery Park: The launching-point for the ferries to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, the park was hopping on a Memorial Day Weekend Saturday.

Liberty imitators don't mind a little competition?

Staten Island Ferry: The last time I rode the Staten Island Ferry, it was an unseasonably warm day in February, but the wind made it a bit too cold for comfort. This time, the weather was perfect.

Emma and Manhattan. By the amount of souvenirs this girl bought, I think I converted her into a NYC lover! She left earlier today, so sadly there will be no new blog posts from her visit.

Some fun numbers:

4: days of work left at my internship
12: days until I fly back into Minneapolis
2: visitors left to entertain (Sarah and Tracy)
3: thank you gifts I need to buy for my bosses by Friday
8: chocolate chip cookies I've eaten in the last 24 hours (seriously, MAKE THESE)
1: suitcases I own to take my things back to Wisconsin. To do: vehemently troll craigslist in search of a large, cheap-and-or-free rolling suitcase