This city has an attitude that is all its own. People who live there have probably forgotten that, people who visit, never do. As a first time visitor I always thought it was best summed up in the Dustin Hoffman quote from Midnight Cowboy "Hey, I'm walkin here", meaning don't piss me off. But my second visit has led me to believe it is more like, "I'm doing my thing, you do yours, and we'll both be fine". People will talk to you if you talk to them. People will help you if you ask. People will leave you alone if you want. I love it!
I was lucky enough to arrive on International Women's Day, when the Defiant Girl was placed in front of the Bull on Wall Street. Sadly, due to (damn) tourists crowded around the Bull, I was unable to get a picture of them together. New Yorkers have always struck me as defiant to hardship kind of people, sort of "throw what you want at us, we will thrive".
I love the traffic in NYC. Before you groan so loud you shatter some eardrums, let me explain further. I am a tourist and never in a hurry to go anywhere and I don't drive nor take taxis because the Metro is the best! What I love so much is the fact that you don't have to wait for the walk light to cross the street. Just look to make sure you can make it and go! If you are too slow, the cars coming at you full speed are going to honk and let you know you better pick up the pace. You can even cross right in front of the police and they won't even look at you funny! Caveat here... look both ways before crossing, even on one way roads. Below is the site of my near demise when I crossed WITH THE LIGHT (I know.... it was my first day and I forgot I could cross against the light) and forgot to look the wrong way down the one way street. The dude on the bicycle with quads of steel had lightning fast reflexes or I would have ended up as a rather large blob smeared all along the lane line.
The bridge was crowdedish, and the weather was warm (as evidenced by the fact you can see my entire face and some of my cleavage) and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Not enough to walk back across too,,, just enough for the one way trip. I did turn around though to take this picture of Manhattan.
I returned to Manhattan via the subway because I had booked a tour of the Federal Reserve which is a bank for other banks. There are no private holdings in the bank. It is where other countries can store gold reserves. Things that help me choose tours I go on.... price, coolness factor, off the beaten path.... I don't do just anything.... So this tour you had to reserve tickets for 30 days in advance. there are only two tours of 25 people each on weekdays (none on weekends... hello..... it's a bank....). You show up at the employee's unmarked entrance on a side street, basically indistinguishable from all the other doorways around it except for the armed security person guarding it. You present your printed ticket and your id to be allowed into the foyer. Then you go through the metal detector and have your belongings searched (jokes on them..... I carried everything on my person and they didn't get to xray any of my stuff). Then you get escorted down a hall and swiped into an elevator to another floor where you follow the arrows past another guard and into the "museum" area. They let you wander around this area for a bit while you wait for the others to show up. They weren't kidding when they said to arrive 30 mins early for security screening and no one is allowed in if you are late. There were some university or maybe high school kids in my group, dressed in very nice clothing that included 3-4 inch heels for the girls.... one question... why? I'm in my cargo pants and runners and my feet were still aching (I bet they hadn't just walked across the bridge though... and if they did.... then I should shut up about my aching feet). The tour guide started off with the blah, blah... and then took us down 80 feet to where the vault is situated on the granite bedrock of the island. According to the guide the vault has never been broken into.... guess she didn't see Die Hard 3. An auxillary vault was open because someone was doing business there - two cages with a couple of billion in gold in each of them... I joked Oprah must be there to make a withdrawal... which wasn't as funny as I thought since the guide reminded me that no private person has holdings there :-( The cylinder into the main vault rotates, drops and seals when they close it to create a water and air tight seal. We were inches away from billions and billions of dollars in gold. Although ingots can be made of any size, the standard ones now weight 28 lbs each. Workers have to wear magnesium shoe covers to prevent smashed feet from dropped bars. Sadly, for obvious reasons, no pictures were allowed.
I walked over to the 9/11 memorial afterwards. There are tours you can take of the museum (again requiring advance ticket purchase) but since it failed all three of my tour choosing factors, I just wandered through the memorial. There are two pools with the names of the dead around the edges.
Here is an (I 100% waited a very, very long time and sweated over the composition so much I could barely sleep, fully intended) artistic shot of the Freedom Tower from the memorial.
The only thing disappointing about this day was I had cream of wheat for breakfast instead of cream cheese something. I did however manage some New York style pizza for supper!
