The plan for Friday was to get up at a reasonable hour, eat breakfast, and head into the city to eat lunch at L&L Hawaiian BBQ. By Friday morning – the New York smog and Pollen were really tearing me up and my feet weren’t any less blistered from the mileage they racked up on day one, so we stopped at a few Duane Reades looking for Claratin and Tylenol. Once found I hobbled to L&L where we had some really great Hawaiian fast food. At the time I thought “man, I hope I can find something like this in LA.” Ironically when I later did a google search I found that L&L is a national chain with many California locations – including two within five miles of my home.
As we left L&L the medicine started to kick in a bit and I was in slightly better spirits as you can see from this alleyway shot.
We walked to the financial district and looked at the construction of the new Freedom Tower going up where the Twin Towers once stood.
From there we walked down Trinity Place stopping at Trinity Church and learned about it’s history and role in/on 9/11.
The roots sculpture
Sculpture of Adam and Eve in the middle of the cemetery (many graves were hundreds of years old).
We walked down the Canyon of Heroes through the financial district. Past the American Stock Exchange and past the famous Bull. Soon we reached Battery Park.
At the entrance to Battery Park was a mangled sculpture of the globe by Fritz Koenig that had once stood in front of the World Trade Towers. It stands now in Battery Park with an eternal flame as a grim reminder of how that world and ours changed on September 11th. Of course, the irony is that it looked sort of mangled to begin with.
After entering Fort Clinton we learned we had arrived five minutes late for the last ferry to Liberty Island. When we walked out of Fort Clinton we stumbled upon a group of street performers. They called themselves “The Positive Brothers” and were more show than go despite a few random hand stands and summersaults. After a bit they lined up five girls from the crowd and started preparing for….something. But, first they got out large canvas bags and informed the crowd (jokingly) that if they started to run away without giving any money they would run us down…since they are black…and we are white and obviously therefore not athletically inclined.
Here is a video (by someone else) of more of their “act.”
We walked away. We took a breather by the River. That speck in the distance is Lady Liberty. This would end up being the closest I’d ever get to her.
After a brief sit we headed back uptown from the Battery Park subway station to Grand Central Station
Aaron gave me a bit of the history of the terminal, that it almost got closed down by greedy entrepeneurs in the 80’s, and that at one time the US had stowed an inactive warhead right in the middle of the main causeway. The missile was so tall that a hole had to be cut in the ceiling – which can still be seen today.
At grand central we loaded up on candy and drinks for our next destination – the AMC theater in Times Square. Paprika came out that day and after recently being gifted a copy of Spirited Away by Cindy I was anxious to see what was heralded as the best Japanimation ever made. It wasn’t.
However, we discovered that customers were allowed out on the roof of whatever floor we were on. We must have gone up six different escalators to get to our theater – but the view outside afterwards was worth it.
After the film we headed home, tired from a long day.
