Visit to NYC
John, Michael and I popped into NYC to do the standard tourist thing. Everything went pretty smoothly apart from the odd hiccup... missing our train in the morning (just had to have another coffee), taking the wrong subway (could have sworn it said "uptown") and walking in the wrong direction (next time perhaps we should bring a compass as Michael suggested).
We went first to the Empire State Building where we saw -- and participated in -- the worlds longest queue (TM). Rumour has it that the
Petronas towers
in Kuala-Lumpur has a longer one but I frankly don't believe it. From the 86th floor (just below the "dirigible mooring mast" -- alas there were no airships going up today so we had to take the boring old lift) we got a pretty cool view of Manhattan:
It's a bit unfortunate they have to put up such a big fence to prevent people jumping/falling off.. it really obscures the view.
Also from the top you can see the World's largest department store (Macy's) and the World's most green island statue (the Statue of Liberty):
Next on our tour of Manhattan we headed south to check out the financial district and the site of the World Trade Center. I was quite impressed that they'd repaired the site's transport links -- the PATH station was functioning normally. It was also interesting to see quite a lot of damage to nearby buildings still remained after all this time.
While waiting for Donald Trump to give his approval for the plans to redevelop the site into some kind of memorial, there is an official set of memorial plaques as well as copious unofficial memorials from members of the public:
Next we headed further south to Battery park where we took a "sea taxi" out to have a close-up look at Liberty island:
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