NEW YORK DAY 3

Raining, raining, raining. At least that funky bin juice smell is getting washed away.  I do find it extraordinary that bags of rubbish are just left on the sidewalk for the garbo’s to pick up.

But the downside is that I couldn’t take any photos today. I did a tour of Brooklyn and I couldn’t take one photo.  Brooklyn looks different. It still has a village feel about it and the best part has to be the view across the river of the Manhattan skyline.  It does look impressive.

There is a prison in Brooklyn that has just been re-opened. It looks like an office block. The ground floor is commercial space that is going to be leased but not to the following businesses.

  1. Gun Shop
  2. Hardware Shop
  3. Locksmith
  4. Bakery

The first three are obvious but you can’t open a bakery for fear of baking knifes and keys into breads.

I’m not making this up people.

With all this rain and no umbrella I walked around the Financial District because it’s easy to duck in and out of buildings.  I came across the bull that symbolizes Wall Street and people were just gagging to have their photo taken with it.

I stood in front of the New York Stock Exchange, which had a massive US flag draped in front of it.  Even though the buildings look familiar there was no ‘oh wow, here I am on Wall Street’ moment.

It was the same when I came across Tiffany’s.

But later in the day when I was on the subway at Union Square and I saw the Q train that goes to Coney Island a smile crept across my face.  I love the movie The Warriors. The Warriors were trying to get a train to Coney Island from Union Square because they were being chased.  I think I’m going to have to visit Coney Island.

Let’s backtrack a minute though. So standing in Wall Street didn’t do it for me. I walked over to ground zero and maybe it was the rain or the construction that is taking place but I couldn’t get a good look.

But looking around the tight streets around Ground Zero I wondered where all the debris went. I mean buildings around it must be have buried. I saw some photos of buildings next to Ground Zero whose windows were all shattered and I just still couldn’t believe this had happened.

I braved the rain and I walked around the site and got a scope of the size of the area. It is huge.

But the eeriest part of all, a plane flew overhead and I looked up. And that was when the emotion hit me. It freaked me out. My heart raced and I just wanted to get out of there.  Crazy, crazy stuff people.

Last night, I went for dinner with some other bloggers down in Greenwhich Village.  At the french restaurant, Tartine. The Village at night is cool. On a summer’s evening it is even better.

Brownstones and treelined streets.  Very pretty.

Picked up a cupcake at Magnolia Bakery at 11pm on a Wednesday night.

Magnolia Bakery = yummy cakes

I can see why Clover Moore wants to turn Sydney into a 24-hour city.

1 Comment

  • At 2012.08.24 13:24, james willow said:

    nice blog

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