New York, New York. (17th Aug)

The following morning we got up, asked for somebody to sort out the TV in our room and set off to walk to Grand Central Station. In common with most of our hotels the Gershwin offered no breakfast but they had recommended a nearby deli and diner which we found and enjoyed later.
We were making our way on foot to Grand Central Station, which had been recommended highly by several people, when we encountered on Broadway a major police incident. There were uniformed officers on all four corners of the intersection at least five police vehicles and barriers closing the side roads. We were wondering what had happened right there to have such a large police presence when we noted similar numbers of blue uniforms and vehicles all the way down Broadway. The street was being closed for a parade. By the time we reached the floats in a side street, all participants decked out in Indian costumes and sets, not Native American but from the Indian sub-continent, we must have seen 200 policemen. New York claims rightly to have managed its crime problem clearly they are prepared to employ enough police to make the streets safe.
When we reached Grand Central station it was hugely impressive; we were blown away by the scale of everything and the architecture. The food court was excellent and all varieties of food were there, being less adventurous than some, Julia and I had breakfast type food since it was our first meal of the day. Julia had a croissant while I think I had a big peanut cookie both were washed down with hot chocolate. When we emerged from the station having purchased a good guidebook, following another recommendation, we saw a double decker bus. It was of the same company, Grays, which we had used in San Francisco, so we decided to sign up for it. There were many touts in the area selling the “hop on hop off” tickets for the bus and we signed up for the 48 hour ticket. This entitled us to four separate tours over two days with as many on and offs as we wished.
Having paid and signed up we boarded a bus which was on the Down Town Loop. This time the driver and guide were two separate people, the driver was a black woman, Miss Lucas, and the guide was an oriental man, who styled himself Mr. Yahoo Google, because he knew everything about New York and, by chance, he happened to be the most handsome tour guide in the city. How lucky could we get? It was a continuation of California in that everyone was after a tip, it was notable that the guide never checked the tickets of people getting on the bus because I surmise the more people on the bus the more possible tips?
The Downtown Tour took in Times Square, the Empire State Building, The Rockefeller Centre, Little Italy and the World Trade Centre site; it was basically a tour of all the various buildings that had claimed to be world’s tallest.
We departed the bus after several of the above in order to visit the site of the twin towers, Mr. Google briefed us on the best way to see the area and, to be fair, it was excellent advice.
We followed his directions past the side of the building site where the towers had been and entered the Winter Gardens building which had been badly damaged in the attack but has since been rebuilt. We went up to the second floor, which incidentally we would call the first floor, and looked over at the enormous area of building work. The small church, St Paul’s, stands in the corner of the area, relatively untouched by the destruction or rebuilding. There was something unreal about the situation; the normality of it all belied the devastation that had taken place. We walked out of the other side of the building which opened out onto the river and there were people eating and drinking seemingly without concern.
As we reentered the building there was a guy taking a tour round the Winter Gardens, it emerged that he was one of the rescue workers who now gives up his time to show parties round to help people understand the events of that fateful day. We tagged onto his party. He was nearing the end of the tour with only three stops left, only about two hundred yards in all but I hope I never forget what he told us about. He stopped the party in a broad lobby where the lifts to higher up the building opened their doors, here was a field mortuary, he explained, where recovered bodies and body-parts were laid in the hope of matching them to each other and a name. He, the most ordinary of men, had been part of dealing with that carnage and now could talk about it calmly. The next stop was another open area when he told us there had been temporary beds for the rescue workers to nap in when they reached the point of exhaustion. He said the greatest compliment to the rescuers was that the beds were never used. His final stop was at the American Express Memorial. The firm lost eleven of their workers on 9/11 and to commemorate them they had commissioned this memorial, it consists of an eleven sided pool at ground level with a 600lb crystal suspended above the centre, randomly from the roof, water drops into the pool like falling tears, and the names of the victims are engraved on each side of the pool with a few words given by their families. It was immensely moving to us. I thanked our guide for his tour and asked if doing it helped him, he said that it did very much and he thanked me for asking.
Leaving the Winter Gardens, which incidentally houses Deloitte where conceivably Sarah could have ended up, we walked up to St. Paul’s chapel. It is entirely open to the public and it is where many of the rescue workers found rest. The pews are still scarred by the worker’s equipment that they sometimes did not remove before falling asleep. It was also where people came to volunteer in the days after the destruction. The parishioners came and made hot meals and drinks, there were beds set up because some of the rescue workers were there for week after week. It was the spiritual home of the volunteer relief effort for eight months and became the focus for many of the messages of support from all over the world. It was the little things that struck home, as is so often the case, an exhibit noted that massage-therapists and chiropractors started appearing at the church to help the rescue workers get their equipment off and then to loosen them up so that they could sleep. Each day, volunteers changed the sheets and blankets and placed a stuffed animal on the pillows. They worked diligently to make sure the cots were always ready for tired workers.
I was reading these captions when a young girl standing next to me said to her companion, “My friend’s Dad is on a memorial at his fire-station in Brooklyn.” It brought the reality of the situation into sharp focus.
Standing so close to the Twin Towers and being left undamaged by the attack it is especially ironic to note that St. Paul's Chapel is Manhattan's oldest public building in continuous use.
We left the Ground Zero area very affected by it all, we debated going round the tribute centre but decided that we didn’t need it.
On our way to the next point of interest, Battery Park, and where we could reconnect with the down town loop, we stopped for lunch at a TGI Friday. For the first time on the holiday the service was poor, we had a big burger and an ice-cream between us, we eventually got served, but people were walking out before and after ordering. We waited another eon before the bill was presented; we paid as close to the amount as we could and moved on.
Battery Park is the site of a gun battery commanding the river; it is also the place where you can take a ferry to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. We had decided to give both of those a miss, Statue of Liberty because you cannot get very far up it these days and Ellis Island because it takes about four hours to do it justice.
On entering the park you encounter a strange sculpture, which when explained becomes very poignant, it was a large metal sphere which had pride of place in the fountain of the World Trade Plaza. It was found under the rumble; it has sustained a gash through its centre, but remains structurally intact and it was inaugurated at Battery Park in a ceremony marking six months since the attack. The irony is stark; it was created in 1971 by artist Fritz Koenig, The Sphere was described as "a monument fostering world peace." Its resting place in the park is temporary as they intend to return it to the Twin Towers site when the work is finished.
While Julia sat down I went off to seek the Staten Island Ferry Terminal, I saw that it was coming and going from a dock further along the river, returning with this intelligence I found Julia gone. We met up quickly at another seat on the front and she was clearly a bit shaken. She explained that she had been sitting, not particularly aware of anything when a guy approached, Julia has a phobia regarding snakes, and to her horror this chap had a large snake round his neck. He was posing with the snake and punters for photos but he did no business with Julia who confessed to running away from him and it!
Near where she had retreated to there was a jetty from whence the Water Taxi plied its trade. Our Grays tour ticket gave us a free harbour cruise with the Water Taxi so we set about claiming our prize. We exchanged the tokens we had for tickets and settled to wait for the next vessel in, claimed by the 13 year-old in charge, to be arriving at 4.30pm. Another Water Taxi came and went but that one was operating as a ferry to the statue, so we waited stoically. At about the right time another ferry poled up and unloaded, our line was about 50 yards away so we started to shuffle towards the boat, 13 year old in the lead, to his surprise and discomfort, the crew slipped their lines and set off empty. The New York lynch mob had very clear ideas who was at fault, so while 13 year old was phoning someone, ropes were being produced and suitable trees checked out. The guy at the front of the queue was from New Jersey, he was with his wife and three children, he had already fallen out with his wife and now there was something else she could blame him for. While she sat on a nearby wall with a face like a smacked arse, I quote my year 11 students, refusing to speak to him; he was venting considerable spleen on the boy in charge. When questioned the boy admitted that the Taxi had never just sailed off before in his experience but he had only been working there two months and nobody would answer his phone calls. The boy, who may perhaps have really been 17, but you will have detected my tendency to exaggerate for effect, was saved by the intervention of a woman who calmed the mob. We were promised another boat at 5.30 and it duly showed up on time, as did other members of staff more senior than boy, you might almost think they knew of the problem in advance and left the kid to sort it out. We loaded onto the new craft with mumblings of mutiny if it failed to produce a pleasing tour. The wife of the New Jersey man, (FLASA) still refused to converse with him and sat broodingly hostile on the opposite side of the boat. We took up station at the bow end of the upper deck, right next to the wheel-house so we could pretend to drive. Unfortunately the air-con from the lower deck vented hot air onto us but it was better to stand by the rail to see the sights and take photos.
The commentary was excellent but I would struggle to remember much of it, however, one fact which I found stunning was that if Americans can trace their roots back to great-grandparents, 75% of them have in that cohort at least one relative who came to America through Ellis Island. We were on the taxi for about an hour touring the harbour. We visited the Four Waterfalls which are not natural; they are a publically sponsored art work which recycles water from the harbour into waterfalls. We also got close enough to photograph the Statue of Liberty but the sun was low and the picture suffered from it. We were photographed together by the saviour of the 13YOB. It amused me that another sour-faced lady wanted to remain in a seat but keep the rail clear of people so that she could see the sights without rising from her position – her husband had a slightly hunted look about him and offered little support to her unreasonable request.
When we returned to the dock we found ourselves close to a tour bus stop with an enormous line, however buses were coming regularly and we were prepared to travel down stairs and many of those waiting were not so we caught the second bus to come along.
While we waited we saw the police confiscating the designer handbags being sold by two street traders, they must have had about forty bags each and I bet they had paid at least $20 for their stock!
We were dropped off in Times Square and saw where the Night Loop buses were gathering but we resolved to leave that for the following day along with the Uptown Loop. It was a longish walk back to the hotel to discover no improvement to the TV situation. I returned to the front desk and they promised to send up the handyman. He arrived just as we were prepared to go our seeking dinner, he switched on the TV at the set but the remote control had no affect on it as we had been telling them, he went off for new batteries, replaced them in the handset, still no communication between remote and set. He left again returning with several universal remotes but no business resulted with any of them. Hunger was dominating our thinking by now but he insisted on one last attempt, he was gone for longer but returned having found the matching remote to the set; this innovative approach yielded results – we had a choice of programmes at the touch of a button. Finally we had found someone who had worked for his tip.
Our plan for eating was a cross between experience and information, on our first attempt to find the hotel we had seen, and smelt, a tempting Indian Restaurant, we also had a couple of recommended Indian restaurants on the list of eateries given to us by the hotel, all the options seemed to be in the same area so we set off with some confidence. The first place we found was from the hotel list, looked Ok but we progressed, the next was the source of the delicious smell we remembered from the heavily laden first night but as we were preparing to commit ourselves we noticed it was vegetarian; OK for Julia but a complete No-No for me. We retreated to the first place and enjoyed the best Indian meal we have had in a long time, the beers helped of course but it really was good. Julia’s choice was a deep green colour when it arrived due to the mint but it tasted delightful. We complimented the head waiter and at that point he detected that we are English, he was puzzled then that we had not ordered hotter food so that’s his view of Brits eating in New York.
We returned to the hotel very satisfied. It had been a big slice of New York to deal with in a day but we had enjoyed it, now that the TV was cured we were actually too tired to watch it.