We hadn't had time to shop yesterday for breakfast ingredients so had to live the American way and go out for breakfast today. Jake, our airbnb host, had told us about Cafe Berkli Parc that turned out to be a good choice. We had nice yoghurt and granola with fresh fruit and good coffee. It was good value and friendly with communal tables, we'd definitely recommend if you every found yourselves in Lower East Side.

Then down to the serious business of our first day of sightseeing in New York. We knew that the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island were closed due to the US Federal Government shutdown but headed down to Battery Park anyway to see what was being offered in place of visits to these iconic NY sights. What was being offered were expensive 'cruises' so we instead chose the free trip on the Staten Island Ferry. This was a clever trick as the ferry passes close enough to the Statue of Liberty to get some ok photos, not the same as a proper visit but as a free ride pretty good. And we discovered that it was possible to stand at the open doors of the loading/unloading ramps which provided decent photo spots for capturing the Manhattan skyline. After a quick stroll around the Staten Island harbour it was back on the ferry for the return trip to South Ferry.

South Ferry is an ideal place to start a tour of New York's financial district in Lower Manhattan. Jill had been here before so she took on the role of tour guide using a walking tour in our guide book (it may 15 years old but it hasn't let us down). Dave was then free to be chief photographer and enjoy the sights of Wall Street, Trinity Church (once the tallest building in NY, now surrounded by skyscrapers), New York Stock Exchange and Federal Reserve Bank.

Our tour told us to include a visit to the World Trade Center, so it does need an update but the principle holds good. Jill had been twice to the observation deck at Two World Trade Center in previous NY visits and very much wanted to visit the site to view the Memorial and indeed to bring to mind those who lost their lives on 9/11. There are plenty of signs directing visitors to the 9/11 Memorial: it seems the commonly known term "Ground Zero" is no longer used, we guess that New Yorkers need to move on from recognising this place solely as the point of a detonation. It was close to the final entry time for the day so we took the route of purchasing entry to the 9/11 Memorial Museum that provided immediate entry passes to the Memorial to ensure that we would get in today.

We'll leave the photos to illustrate the Memorial but will try to describe our emotional responses to it. The names of everyone who lost their life that day are inscribed around the pools with careful adjacencies of names, visitors are encouraged to touch the names and you discover that the names are actually cut out, right through the bronze parapet, a significant detail in the design and one that adds to the meaning of the pools. The 9/11 Memorial staff place a white rose in the names of the victims on their birthdays. The water cascading into the pools in the footprints of the Twin Towers creates a place of quiet contemplation, even whilst surrounded by the building sites of the Memorial Museum and Four World Trade Center Tower, and the Memorial does evoke a feeling of the spirit of those who lost their lives. It also celebrates survival - and it is amazing to appreciate just how few of those working in the Twin Towers on 9/11 died - a lone tree, a Callery Pear Tree, survived from the original World Trade Center Plaza and has been carefully nurtured and returned to the Memorial as the "Survivor Tree". An incredibly moving experience.

Our financial district tour continued via the Winter Garden of the World Financial Center, a welcome short respite from the falling temperature and rising winds. We'd walked past Merchants River House, a restaurant on the riverside in getting to the WFC and hadn't really given it much of a glance but decided to go back to see what sort of food and prices (we expected expensive given its location with views across the Hudson River) and were pleasantly surprised that it looked reasonable so went in for beer and burgers for dinner. This was good NY food! And we were treated to great views as the sunset turned the sky a brilliant red behind the skyscrapers across the Hudson River. A walk back along the waterfront with the Hudson backdrop provided a lovely end to our first NY day.