A quick walk around the block before going for breakfast is a great way to see New York City come alive. The streets are full of delivery lorries leaving their wares at all kinds of shops and stores in readiness for the days trading.
Today, we headed to a local deli-cum-café called Bread and Honey round the corner from the Hotel. While not as fancy as the Brooklyn diner from yesterday, it’s less than half the price. Despite the relatively empty seats in the photograph below, Bread and Honey is busy with local New Yorkers coming and going constantly as people go to work.
After breakfast, we braved the cold and Subway to head to the south of Manhattan, and to the 9/11 memorial. Never making it up the ‘Twin Towers’ I was interested to see what had become of ground Zero, last having been to the location in 2009 before any memorial was open, and before the One World Tower had been built.
The memorial borders on being a museum, and in true New York style, there is a queue to get in. Thankfully, the queue had not got to large by the time we got there, and we were in within 15 minutes. The memorial is based in the basement of the ‘Twin Towers’, with the foundations being exposed to show where they stood. Much of the memorial is given up to artefacts found during the clean up operation, many with stories from their owners who had subsequently been traced. There are many video presentations around the memorial with interviews from persons who were affected by the atrocity. The films also show the very memorable footage of people jumping from the higher floors where they had been trapped by the fires on the lower floors of the towers.
Lunch, or rather, a late lunch, was grabbed slightly off the tourist trail at a place called Le District across from the Freedom Tower at One World Trade Centre. It’s like a wine bar and dining experience with market stalls. Tucked away inside a shopping mall called Brookfield Place located at Battery Park City, walking past the Cafe District to reach Le Bar restaurant. The Steak Frittes was super, and for New York, good value. Being a stones throw away from the financial district, I can only imagine the $billion deals which may have taken place here?
The trade centre area of Manhattan is dominated by the ‘One World Tower’. This was our next destination, and while you can pay to ‘jump the queue’ when booking in advance, this would have been of no benefit as there was no queue at all. When you walk out of the elevators on the 102nd floor, for maximum dramatic affect, there’s a two-minute video. As far as I could tell it serves no purpose other than to waste two minutes of your life, or maybe slow the crowd down? However, the screens then lift to unveil the magnificent view.
Evening was soon upon us, and it was time to head to Madison Square Gardens to watch ‘The Avette Brothers” with their support, “Brandi Carlile“.