We had tickets for 9/11 memorial this day and since that was way downtown Manhattan and we were mid Manhattan, we wanted to see if we could get everything in downtown Manhattan done. That would be Wall Street, Occupy Wall Street, 9/11 Memorial, and Statue of liberty. (The ferry leaves from a park down at the very south end of Manhattan).
We ended up waking up a little late this day. We did fly all night long 2 nights before. So we figured out which subway to take to get down to the 9/11 memorial the fastest. Our tickets were for 11 we left our hotel room around 10:30. We hopped on the train we wanted, but we couldn't hear the announcement of the train stops very well so we had found a map in the subway station waiting for the train. We know we need 4 stops we can't remember if it's 5. We get off after 4 stops. As soon as we leave the train there is a bad smell. We start walking up the stairs to street level and it is way worse. This little girl in front of us starts to complain how stinky it is. We get out on the sidewalk and it is disgusting. I almost lost the contents of my stomach. I pulled Jon across the street so I wouldn't throw up. We realized there is a fish market around the corner from the subway exit. We also realized we were in China town and it was a little scarier than where we had been so far. Graffiti was even on cars in this area.
We knew we got off at the wrong stop. So we walked to another subway tunnel and hopped back on the train. We didn't get to the 9/11 memorial until 11:30 then we realized we had to go find a kiosk and pick up our real tickets. We couldn't find the kiosk and then it was noon. We decided we weren't going to make it to the 9/11 memorial so we headed to the Statue of Liberty ferry. The line was so long we were not going to make it on in time to see both the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. So the day was turning out to be very depressing. The only thing we had seen so far was Occuppy Wall Street. I was really sad, I couldn't believe we had gone all the way to New York and were going to miss seeing the 9/11 Memorial. To see the 9/11 memorial you had to have advanced tickets. I got ours online and I didn't know if there was another place to get them. So we decided to head back that way and see if we could still make it to that. We found a museum that costed $15 dollars and you could get the tickets to the FREE 9/11 memorial. I didn't want to pay for the museum when we had free tickets before but this seemed like our only chance.
This museum was created by some family members of the victims of 9/11 and it was amazing. I didn't take any pictures I was too busy reading quotes from victims, family members, and survivors. They had radio transmissions from the firefighters. They had 2 walls covered in pictures of victims. I cried the whole way through this museum. It was awesome. Then we went over to the pools which around the outside of these gigantic pools were the names of the people in the airplanes, the towers, the pentagon, and the firefighters. It was sooo cool. I was so glad we were able to make it there.
Then we went and found the Wall Street Bull and the New York Stock exchange. We walked so much that day. My feet hurt so bad. We walked all over downtown Manhattan. After these last things we got back on the subway and headed back uptown to dinner at the Seinfeld restaurant. On our way there the train was stopping off at grand central station. We decided to get off and see Grand central station. I wanted to find the whispering gallery. We had to pay for an audio tour to find the whispering gallery. It really worked I could hear Jon from 40 feet away or there abouts. Then we got back on the train and headed to Tom's Restaurant, aka Seinfeld diner. We got on the downtown train and headed in the wrong direction. We did get better at using the subway. We did figure out we went the wrong direction and got on an uptown train. The inside of the diner didn't look anything like the set they used but the outside you'll recognize if you were a Seinfeld fan. The food was terrible. But we had to go try it. Then we went and walked Broadway and saw times square which was way neat when there weren't underwear adds playing on the huge TV screens. I was glad we saw it at night. It was really awesome.
What started out depressing ended up to be a busy, fun, wonderful day.
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