NEW YORK CITY - WOW!

I always wanted to visit NYC and we are so pleased we did! Sure, the hotel is great and that alone is making this leg of our trip fantastic. But everything else is incredible.

This morning we took a trip to the World Trade Center Memorial. This was a very moving and emotional experience; both Julie and I cried as we walked around.

The construction of the new Freedom Tower is well underway and a testament to the resilience of New Yorkers. The building is graceful and elegant and fitting for the site.

The tours of the site are NOT money making projects, all that is asked is for a voluntary donation and the organisation co-ordinating the tours is a not for profit enterprise.

On the old site of the Twin Towers there is a pair of man-made waterfalls, each of them in the footprint of the actual towers.

The surrounds are of bronze and carry the names of the fallen carved into the bronze.

The names are grouped into the respective areas of their demise, i.e. ‘World Trade Center’; ‘Flight 93’; and ‘First Responders’ to name but a few.

Perhaps the most poignant of them all were the several names which included the persons’ name and “and unborn child”. The poor souls never had a chance.

From there we went for lunch before taking a visit to the Empire State Building.

The view from atop of this building is awesome.

Even though the weather was misty it was still possible to capture the amazing architecture of the city from above.

Even Julie got in on the act; no mean feat for her considering her fear of heights.

The next couple of days we were happy to spend journeying on the ‘Hop-on, Hop-off’ tour bus, interspersed with trips on the subway.

New York is so easy to get round and not as expensive as feared.

The SoHo area of New York is fascinating with many of the building built of cast iron.

There are many high end stores here and it was lovely being able to wander freely.

We spent most of one of our days on the harbour with a cruise.

It was b*^%@y cold on the water and the weather has certainly taken a turn for the worse.

We sailed out past the Statue of Liberty but were not able to land on Staten Island because of the damage caused by the severe storm Sandy in late November.

Liberty is a magnificent sight never the less as she stands majestic at the harbour entrance.

There is so much to do here that there is no way we can do all we want. Likewise, there is no way I can portray New York in this blog. I’ll close this one for now and hopefully get another one off before we move on.

Bear with us if we don’t blog for a few days but we will have even less chance to get net access when we move onto the ship.