Today was a huge day. We set off about 9am and walked the 15 mins to the local railway station to get the train to Manhattan. It took just under an hour and a half to get to Grand Central Station.
We then walked the few blocks to H & B which is a massive electrical store, mostly camera, video equipment etc but also 3D printers and lots of other boy toys. Pete enjoyed having a good look around but given the way the Aussie $ is at the mo there weren't any bargains to be had. There were so many customers it was unreal and there must've been 200+ staff, mostly Hasidic Jews manning the many check outs and roaming the floors ready to answer any q's.
From there we walked to the nearest metro stop. Along the way we stopped at a neighbourhood pizza place and grabbed a slice of yummy pizza each. We used the subway to get downtown to the World Trade Centre stop. Another short walk and we were at ground zero. What two years ago was a fenced in construction site is now a fully open area complete with the museum which we saw being constructed last time. The survivor tree, like all the trees have really grown heaps in that time.
The museum was very well done, lots of stories and exhibits including a lot of wreckage, twisted beams etc from the twin towers. There were also some of the burnt out wrecks of the NYFD first responders vehicles that were destroyed when the second tower fell as they were helping at the first tower.
Walking around the outside area we overheard an hilarious conversation between a woman in her 70's and her mother, all held at high volume in a classic NY accent: Daughter, do you want some water? Mother, no I don't want a drink cos then I'll have to go to the John. Daughter, you have to keep up your fluids. Mother, yeah but I don't want to have to use the John. And on it went for some time with the mother going on about her problems with using public "johns".
We spent a few hours at the 9/11 memorial and museum before heading back to the metro and over to Canal St. We walked through Chinatown and into Little Italy. The idea was to get some dinner at the San Gennoa street festival but it was seriously over crowded it was unpleasant so we walked through a bit of it before heading back to Chinatown to grab a train back to Grand Central and switch to the metro north train back to Fairfield.
We got back to Fairfield station about 8.30pm. We walked to the local whole foods and grabbed something for dinner and by the time we walked to Norms it was a little after 9.30. Norm got in shortly after and we chatted until we all crashed about midnight.