Happy Sunday!

The New York Trip continues today.  I missed yesterday but will make up for it today with 15 images and two videos.  🙂

I’m not really sure why we did this but we scheduled most of our activities for Friday.  So it started with our $50 cold breakfast early in the morning (see Friday’s post) and ended around midnight.  Now my normal bedtime is 9:30 – 10:30 p.m.  We did a heck of a lot of walking, standing, and listening for 16 hours.  I don’t think I’ve ever worked that many hours in one day before.

I have a couple of images from Ground Zero memorial but our first scheduled event was at 9:00 a.m. at the Freedom Tower.  It was too far to walk so we took a taxi.  I asked the doorman to get us a taxi, which he promptly did and as I fumbled around for some money for a tip while the taxi was waiting the smallest bill I had was $10.  I should have asked for change but was too self-conscious to do so.   He made a nice score with me.

Then either the taxi driver got lost or was just building time on the meter because that turned out to be a $46 ride.  It was $57 from the freaking airport and the Freedom Tower isn’t nearly the distance that was.  Plus we had to walk two blocks just to get to Ground Zero.

This is 7 World Trade Center.  I was completed a couple of years before the Freedom Tower.  If you stand in the right place you can see the reflection of the Freedom Tower on its glass facade.

This is a panorama image (created by “stitching” several images together) of the South Tower.  Remember you can click on any image to reveal a larger more detailed image.  We only spent a few minutes there because we still had to get to the Freedom Tower and go through security.  Security is everywhere with heavily armed guards and a security system and scanners that rival the airport.  In fact it was more invasive than the airport one.

Once you get through security you line up and one of the guides directs the appropriate number of people to the elevator.  The elevator ride was amazing!!!!  I have included a link that shows a video of the 47 second ride from the ground to the top.  With all the sound and the video surrounds the elevator.  It was breathtaking to say the least.  Hard to imagine you can go 102 floors straight up in only 47 seconds.

Here is the link –> Click Here for the Freedom Tower elevator video.  Don’t forget to come back here.  🙂

So we get to the top of the Tower and you are presented with a short video on a large screen.  Once the video is finished the screen pulls up and you are left with a view of the city.  Most of the images that follow are taken from the 360 observatory that is the top floor of the Freedom Tower.  It takes a fair amount of time to walk clear around and we had until 2:00 p.m. when our guided tour of Ground Zero was scheduled to start.  I apologize for some of the images as there is an annoying reflection in the image.  I couldn’t help that because of the people standing near by and the angle of the sun.  I could take most of the reflection out if I wanted to spend hours doing it.  I think the images are clear enough for you to get the feeling of the vast view offered.

One of the more stupid things we did was at the beginning of our walk through the observatory.  A representative shows you an “iPad” type device and holds it up the skyline.  It puts the names of the buildings on the screen and if you tap on the name it will fly you to the building and give you a brief history of that building, landmark, or body of water.  She made it sound like this was part of the package (which by the way was also expensive.)   Then she said for only $15 you can use this device while you’re here.  It must have struck a bad chord with both of us because we both said at the same time, “No thanks.”  Big mistake.  If you go spend the $15.  We ended up asking people who had the device about what building was that or what river is that.  🙂

What follows is a series of images taken from walking around the observatory.  Some of the images have reflections and some are pretty decent.

This was our first view of the Statute of Liberty.  On Saturday we took a cruise around the island and got some real close-ups of the Statue.  We opted not to stand in line for hours just to get closer.  You have to reserve months in advance if you want to climb the Statute, which I did not want to do.

Ellis Island.  Another place you can book a tour.  I had no desire to spend several hours walking through this area and standing inline.  I know Jeanne would have liked that because she likes museums but this was one of the compromises we made.  🙂

On the right is the famous Brooklyn Bridge and on the left is the Queensboro Bridge.  Our tour guide suggested we walk to the Brooklyn Bridge and walk across it. By the time our tour of Ground Zero and the 911 Museum was over there simply wasn’t enough time to do that.

I was resting on one of the benches while Jeanne (middle of the image) continued her trip around the observatory.  I knew the image would be back-lit and that is the effect I wanted so that it showed just silhouettes of the people.

Some more skyline of New York, with buildings that I don’t know the name of.  <sigh>

They have baseball fields in the heart of all the skyscrapers.

This is not a good image but I had to capture the footprint of the North Tower.  I had to hold the camera at such an angle I couldn’t get a decent shot of it.

We had to take this selfie of us at the Observatory.  🙂

The upper Manhattan skyline with the Empire State Building.

Here is a video I made with my iPhone.  There is a large area in the middle of the Observatory where you can see the ground 102 stories below.  Intellectually you know there is not a big hole throughout the building but what you see in the video is real-time video of the roadway that runs past the Freedom Tower.  I can tell you that I got a little big of vertigo from walking across it.

Click Here for the short Video.

That’s all for today.  Enjoy your day and be careful.  More to come…