Everyone has to do it, so the (free!!!) Staten Island Ferry trip past the Statue of Liberty was next on the list, plus sailing past our eponymous Ellis Island. The view from the ferry again brings the stark 9/11 reminder with the gap in the skyline so close to the ferry’s route, that travellers that morning must have been horrifyingly close to the unfolding scenes.
Sections of the Financial District and the adjacent City Hall buildings are now a barricaded enclave, with (rather artistic...) solid brass street barriers protecting the entrance to Wall Street, black-clad, assault rifle-toting guards on the municipal buildings, and the whole section around City Hall check-pointed and blocked off to traffic apart from buses and official vehicles. But business carries on and the nearby Century 21 outlet store, directly across from Ground Zero, is thronged with office workers looking for bargains of designer leather jackets reduced from $2000 to only $1200 alongside $5 T-shirts. (Note: I©NY T-shirts are 8 for $10 in Chinatown, and $25 each in some tourist shops!!!!!). The skyscrapers are amazing, and even more so when one I was craning at is apparently only 1/3 the height of the now-vanished Twin Towers. Strange how something that is now absent still has such an amazingly strong presence.........
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