We'll really quickly skip past Day 12 and just call it a 'rest' day and not go into discussing the hours of American tv we watched while having a day off!
DAY 13: A much more active day! We had a day pass for New York Water Taxis which included a visitor pass to the Ground Zero Memorial in the World Trade Centre area. It was so beautifully done - 2 identical sunken water features built into the foundations of the original footprints of the 2 towers that were lost so they're absolutely enormous in size. Our photos won't do justice to how serene and lovely the memorials are. We were lucky with the weather too as it was such a perfect day with blue skies and hardly any wind. There's a very impressive (and highly organised!) queueing system to enter the memorial and lots of security checks - we must have shown our passes at least 6 times.
We also got to see the new No 1 World Trade Centre Tower they're re-building which will become the tallest skyscraper in New York at over 105 floors. So far they've built up to floor 85. The new building and the memorial has had lots of trees planted around it so the site of such an immense tragedy has been turned into a tranquil, serene park.
Next up we hopped back on the water taxi and went to Brooklyn and had the most delicious pizza at Grimaldi's who cook their famous pizzas in a coal-fired brick oven. We tried to go there last week at 6.00pm and the queue outside to get in would have taken over an hour's wait. This time we went at 4.30pm and there was still a queue but it only took a 5 minute wait and it was worth it! We also shared a really good butter-pecan ice cream with hot fudge sauce from the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory which is right under the Brooklyn bridge. Yum!
After a little stroll around Brooklyn's waterfront (which may have included a slight detour thru a candy shop!) we got the last water taxi back to Manhattan which was just as the sun was setting over the Statue of Liberty - it looked amazing. We both took dozens and dozens of photos! The water taxi was a great way to get around and we had a great day (we really recommend it!). Be prepared: below are LOTS of photos of the Statue of Liberty!
DAY 14: We're on holiday so that means no alarms - so another relaxing sleep in was had today, yay, we love sleeping in! We had to force ourselves to turn the tv off and go get out and about in New York, ha ha. Once we did get out we decided to explore our upper west side suburb. What we love about New York is that you turn the corner and make a new discovery of either an amazing building, quirky shop or fantastic Halloween decorations on display. We constantly keep finding things that delight and amaze us. It's such an entirely different - and fascinating - world and way of life that we're living in at the moment.
So this afternoon we walked all around 70th to 85th street mostly along Broadway and our purses took quite a walloping! Polly bought a new handbag off a street stall and Cara bought several handbags, pair of shoes and clothes from this great store we discovered called Filene's which sells all the department store end of season products at amazing prices! Next up Cara needs to shop for another suitcase to carry all her new purchases!
Thanks for reading and we'll end this blog with some words of wisdom spotted on a billboard today....
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