Hi all,
I had the best sleep of the trip so far last night, eight hours and only woke up once! Haven't really had jet lag to be honest apart from having a bit of trouble falling asleep at night. I've not felt awful during the day though.
Today we set off to Fulton Avenue station to do a free walking tour with New Europe. We got Pret along the way (one of my favourite food chains that was in England). One we joined the tour, our guide was a local from Brooklyn called Zev and he was fantastic!
We learned lots of great little facts throughout the tour. New York has five boroughs - Queens, The Bronx, Manhattan (named after a word from the Lenape tribe that lived here first meaning "place of general inebriation", I suspect he might have been having us on!), Brooklyn and Statten Island.
The reason the Dutch came here in the first place was because the American Indian Lenape tribe had been hunting beavers for their fur which could be sold for a tidy profit. The land here is really valuable too because manhattan island is at the end of a bottleneck. Once you're there, it's really easy to build forts etc to surround your enemy and defend yourself.
Fast forward to 1776 when the Americans signed the Declaration of Independence, two months later the English arrived and occupied New York. The revolutionary war lasted for seven years.
We then walked to the foot of Wall Street to the charging bull statue, which is always surrounded by tourists who touch its privates for good luck (I didn't partake - I've been getting my travel karma up instead by helping people with directions). An artist made this statue in 1987 after the stock market crashed and then eventually recovered to celebrate weathering the storm. It's a bull because it symbolises the way a bull attacks - bows it's head with its horns raised up ready to charge and push its head up. I doubt he intended for its genitals to be good luck though!!
From here we could also see a building that had the coats of arms of various big sea ports in the world - Melbourne was up there!
Something I found really interesting was Zev explaining to us that the names of a lot of neighbourhoods here are formed from acronyms. For example...
- Dumbo: Directly Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass
- TriBeCa: Triangle Below Canal Street
- Nomad: North of Madison Square Park
There are heaps more but these are the ones I remembered!
We walked to Battery Park and went inside Clinton Castle, a former fort used to defend Manhattan that was also the immigration checkpoint prior to Ellis Island. In here there was an exhibition showing what the island looked like in 1812, 1886 and 1941 (see below).
Speaking of immigration, the population of the USA is 330 million, and apparently 40% of Americans have at least one relative who went through Ellis Island. As Zev told us this, he also walked us past a women's mission that housed Irish women when they first arrived in order to help them settle in.
We walked past a war memorial along the waterfront and the sun decided to come out which was nice! Then we came across Fraunces Tavern which was a gathering place for revolutionaries.
We passed a beautiful little European style street called Stone street, and Zev told us that fire escapes were introduced after a huge fire in 1835 burned down 500 buildings and lots of people had no way to escape. Now they're a really iconic feature of New York.
We walked to Trinity Church, the church that featured in the movie 'National Treasure' at the end when they dig underneath to find treasure.
Our tour ended at the World Trade Centre. Though we had already been to the Museum the other day, we found out something heartbreaking from Zev that we didn't read about there. In 1993 when a bomb went off in a car park inside the world trade centre, the firefighters couldn't get radio signal through the concrete and steel inside the Twin Towers. Every year afterwards, they asked the mayor for extra funding to upgrade their radios and this was declined numerous times. As a result, on September 11 the firefighters continued to ascend the towers when they were being radioed to advise them to get out. Because their radios wouldn't work, they didn't receive the message and 343 firefighters perished in the towers. He also said he was in Brooklyn that day, and debris was carried over there by the wind. Apparently the smell of burning bodies lingered for months. The thought of that makes me feel sick.
The tour ended and I saw something else heartbreaking, a name on the memorial that read "Vanessa Lang and her unborn child". How sad :(
We caught the train to Herald Square and decided to spend the afternoon shopping. I was on a mission for new gloves and sunglasses (mine broke today). Neither mission was successful! Macy's was horrible - so full of people and incredibly rude staff. We have found all the people in the street and trains to be really friendly and helpful, often stopping to help us without us even having to ask.
We left Macy's fairly soon because it was a bit like Myer is at home now - all swishy rich people brands that cost far too much. We went to H&M (bought a dress for $5) and Foot Locker. Apparently only men can play basketball, because so far both here and in Australia there are never any women's boots. Grrr!
On the way home we got the train to York Street in Brooklyn and went for dinner at Grimaldi's, the number one pizza place in New York that the likes of Frank Sinatra used to frequent. After waiting in a half hour queue, the original owner (75 year old Mr Grimaldi who was absolutely lovely) welcomed us in. You build your own pizza. You could get a small pizza for 1-2 people or a large for 3-4 people, so naturally each of us bought a large - haha!! The slices were bigger than my face. I had a pizza with pepperoni, Italian meatballs, mushrooms, onions and olives. It was absolutely delicious but I only got through three of the eight slices. The rest is sitting in the fridge to be eaten tomorrow.
After a quick stop at the supermarket we are now home. I'm looking forward to reading my book :)
Love to all
Claire
Xoxox
No comments:
Post a Comment