Wednesday, July 22, 2015

New York City!!! Part Two

New York City!!!!!!
No matter how often one travels to NYC, trying to embrace everything is way too hard.  It is best to focus on a few things and see them well.

All my life, I have wanted to go to Coney Island!  Bugs Bunny ALWAYS  was headed to Coney Island!  So I had to go see why......


Me at the exit of the subway to Coney Island

A map of the area

The Boardwalk!!!!!

Nathan's famous hot dogs!


The hot dogs!

Parachute drop

Rides along the boardwalk

the beach!

History!!!

Nothing defines modern New York City like 9/11!  Every American knows where they were when the Twin Towers and Pentagon were rammed by planes flown by scum.  The Heroes of Flight 93 forced their plane down rather than allow it to be used to kill other Americans.  New York City, a city of museums, put together the 9/11 museum- probably the best developed museum EVER.  If you go to NYC, this is a must!  Much of the museum is off-limits to photographs, so I only have a few.  But throughout our visit, tears formed in my eyes.

The museum itself is enormous!  It has plenty of open space to viewing of artifacts, and space to quietly reflect.

The museum has a short film on the attack, and rooms with information that is not for eveyone.  I thought I was ready for all the information, but after about 1 second in the room dedicated to those who faced only a choice of jumping, I was not ready.  I said a prayer for them, crossed myself, said I was sorry I was too weak to see it, and went off to the next exhibit.  In the center of the museum is a too-large room with the names of each of the victims- and a video biography of hteir lives recorded by their loved ones.  This area really lets you know the people themselves.  Sadly, after a few, it becomes over-whelming.  The museum is like that- everything is examined, even the scum that perpetrated this act.
At the entry, one of the supporting beams that remained intact

At the entry of the museum- two trident support beams

The slurry wall from the original towers

twisted metal

This is an actual stairwell survivors used to exit the building

Twisted metal

The antennae from the top of the tower

the remains of a fire truck

Another view of the trident beams

one entire wall of the museum is covered with blue tiles- artists painted their recollection of the sky that fateful day.  Clearly on the wall, the words from Virgin: No Day Shall Erase You From the Memory of Time!
AS you enter the museum, you are in an upper area ver-looking one of the main rooms- this is one of the last girders moved- it was signed by each of the people who helped sift thru the debris and clean up the site.  There is a short movie depicting the signing.

This flag was flown on the Twin Towers- it was tattered.  One of the healing systems developed by a first responder was to send this flag to different towns and have parts of it sown back together with fragments of local flags.  (http://www.911memorial.org/blog/tags/national-911-flag).  It is called the National Flag!

Remembrance Pool with towers

One of the pools that outline the original tower- in the background is the museum

in St. John the Devine church, this art of 9/11 was quite dramatic!

The World Trade Center was an incredible loss to our country- but in a typical American way, we decided to "stick it" to the scum and rebuild the tower.  In typical American fashion, it took us twice as long as anyone else:-).  But 14 years later, the tower is complete!  And a Magnificent tower she is!!!  Plus there is a wonderful observation tower at the top!  The original was titled "World Trade Center", the new one is named One World Trade Center, or Freedom tower.  (http://onewtc.com/).  At 1776 feet! she is the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere! It is 104 stories tall.  The obervation deck is truly amazing!  From around the city, you can see the Tower rise above!  Once inside, as their phrase says, "you can see forever"!



















The one actual museum we went to was the New York Transit Museum, a museum documenting the development of the subway system.  I know it sounds "snore!"- but it was REALLY good!  It is housed in an old subway station, has actual relic train cars, tons of advertisements from ages past, explanation of the building of the system and tunnels, payment for the train rides, etc.  Excellent and fun museum!  If you have kids, they will love climbing through everything!  Unfortunately, I did not take photos of hte exterior of the train cars- probably because mostly they all looked alike:-)  But I filmed them- when I get the movie done, I wil post it on YouTube.  Enjoy this last segment of our trip to New York City!
Me at the entrance to the museum

They had an entire section on the building of the tunnels.  This is a fun little thing: fake dynamite, you push the lever, and hear the KABOOM!!!!!

Wages and Prices in 1900!

Funny how we thought they were more civilized in the past.  In today's subway cars there are an increbile number of public service posts on behavior, giving your seat to others, not trashing the cars.  Guess things never change.
 Here are some interiors to the subway cars through the ages: 




My actual favorite part: all the great advertisements through the ages!  This is just a very few.  They are worth going to the museum just to see!  On my video, I filmed them, so stay-tuned for the YouTube video:-)








And that, in a nutshell, was our trip to New York City!  It is a wonderful city filled with icnrebile things to do.  I recommend everyone go at least once!


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