The musings and misadventures of a girl unprepared

Monday 26 March 2012

'I have a spill on my pants, a fluffy top and no money. Life is good' - Rach Storey

I tell you what, if we continue to walk this much throughout the rest of our travels I am going to have calves of STEEL. Honestly, looking at a map it is amazing to see how much of the city we've actually covered on foot. I do think it's the best way to travel though, we have stumble across so many things we didn't plan to just by walking around - things we definitely would have missed had we taken the bus or the subway.

However saying that we did cheat a little yesterday by taking the sub down to the Statue of Liberty. But to be fair, that would have taken up far too many hours and we slept in a little too late anyway :P

First we had to go through airport style security checks and I had to get searched because I set the security alarms off... After taking off all items of jewellery, excess layers and anything else I could think of, it turned out that the problem was... the underwire of my bra. Great.

Even on a cold and windy day, getting the ferry over to Liberty Island and seeing the Statue of Liberty up close was indeed a fantastic experience. It's one of those things that you always see in films or on T.V. but it doesn't really dawn on you that it actually exists. It wasn't as big as I thought it would be, but pretty amazing all the same.

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Another thing I love about New York is how friendly the police people are. Not to say that they aren't friendly in England, I don't really know any members of the police force, I have just needed their help and noticed their presence more over here. HOWEVER they are a little rubbish at giving directions. We got so lost on the way to pick up our tickets for the 9/11 Memorial, with different policemen sending us all over the Downtown area, until EVENTUALLY a member of the Memorial staff pointed us in the right direction.

The Memorial really is beautiful. Two large square waterfalls with a 30ft drop into a pool, with the names of all the victims incribed around the outside. Family members and friends helped to decide where each name shoul be placed, in relation to where they worked or who they had close relationships to. Such a simple touch but it definitely helped to make it a perfect way to remember those who were lost. Of course looking at the names and contemplating such a tradgey gives you all sorts of mixed emotions; anger, sadness, empathy. How could someone do this and think that it as the right thing to do? But I suppose that's something I'll never understand. I'm just glad that the governement have provided such a meaningful place for the families and friends of the victims to go and mourn.

By the time we left the 9/11 Memorial we had already done a fair amount of walking, so Aimee and I had to pretty much DRAG Rach and Rach to Wall Street. This was also due to the fact that they have no idea what it is or why I would just want to visit a boring street full of boring business buildings. So as you can imagine we didn't stay to long and unfortunately I didn't get to see any of the Occupy protestors *sadface*, but at least I can say I went there!

Before heading back to the hotel we made a pit stop at Wendy's for our tea. I have to say, I do prefer McDonald's, but you canNOT beat Wendy's BBQ sauce. I may or may not have stolen some to take with me :P

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Last night we were so tired we just chilled in our hotel room. To be honest I probably should have blogged about all this then but once I was upstairs I really couldn't be bothered coming back down to use the computers :P I'll blog about today in a seperate post, so that this one doesn't look TOO daunting, considering it is pretty long already.

(Oh, and for those of you who are wondering who the teddy is, he is called Tim and was my eaving present from the crew at Fat Face! He will be accompanying me throughout my travels.)

4 comments:

  1. You look so high in that first picture Emily

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    1. Sounds rather amazing, its awesome to hear about your travels!
      Love your mascot :)
      I'd love to hear the kinds of things that you stumbled upon by walking, not that I'm demanding or anything but TELL US ;)

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  2. haha thanks for that squidge :p i suppose it isnt the most flattering photo of my, i just thought it was quite funny :p
    thanks dan! are you a dan i know or not? ill try my best to fill you in on everything we stumble across!!

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    1. Indeed I am a Dan you know :p I believe I saw you the day before you left, its just I don't really have any of the email type things that were needed to make comments on this thing so i set one up specially :)

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