Day 4 - NYC

So today we were heading in a different direction which meant taking the subway - always an experience but even more so when you have 8 people all trying to get on and off at the same stop and sometime not really sure which stop that was!

We did fine and our first stop was the World Trade Center Memorial.

There is still much work going on for the new Memorial area.

This church (St. Paul's Chapel) first served as a refuge for people fleeing the collapsing towers and then as a respite for rescuers and now houses many memorials, pictures, photographs and gifts from around the world. It was an awesome experience and looking at the pictures put "a face" to this tragedy that is hard to wipe from your memory! The chapel survived without even a broken window because of a huge sycamore tree on the corner of the property which was thought to have taken the brunt of the debris before toppling.
 

The roots from this tree served as the base for this bronze sculpture that now stands on the church grounds.

From there we headed through the financial district and saw Wall Street.

Then we were on to Battery Park. Since we had so many other things to fit into today, we chose not to go all the way out to the Statue of Liberty but enjoyed some time looking at her from afar.

Finally had time to stop at a street vendor - something the girls wanted to say they did - for a hot dog or NY pretzel. Then, it was on to another subway and we got off near N.Y.U. Two of my grand daughters have shown an interest in this school and they asked if we could make it to the campus.

This is the arch leading into the commons and was it full of students and parents doing campus visitations. There was also this very nice man doing the giant bubbles and of course, two of our group had to give it a try.
  

We eventually made our way to a small Italian restaurant called UVA where we had reservations for a birthday dinner...and thank goodness we did because it was packed the entire time we were there. The food was delicious and the ambiance was lovely - very laid back and super attentive.

After a long, leisurely dinner, we grabbed two cabs and headed for Times Square. Even though we knew we would be on a bit more of an alert than usual, it is a "must see" at night!

It is hard to tell from this picture, but this is a HUGE Ferris wheel inside the front doors of Toys-R-Us. Unfortunately, we just missed the last ride!

All of the lights were a photographer's dream!

We had a bit of a hike back to our hotel, but hike we did and after some nice warm showers, we were ready to face another day. Stay tuned!

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