Day 49: New York City - Downtown

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On my last full day in the US I decided I ought to go do stuff, even though all I really wanted to do was sleep some more. I got the subway to downtown, first stop: ground zero. It wasn't poignant as I thought it would be. All you could see was a big building site as they rushed to finish off the visitor centre which is opening on the tenth anniversary of 9/11 next month. There was a nice plaque to all the firefighters who dies, and lots of tourists trying to be moved.

I next bought some lunch and headed up to the park by City Hall to eat it. You can't actually get a view of City Hall which is a bit rubbish, since the security cordons are really far away and there are lots of trees in front. The park was nice though, and had some weird but quite good sculptures in it.

I nexr caught the free ferry across to Staten Island, since it goes right past the Statue of Liberty and I didn't think I could leave NYC without having seen it. I didn't bother looking around the island though - I just caught the next one back!

My final stop on the sightseeing tour was to go to the Frick Collection, since it came highly recommended by my tutor. This time it was open, and I conned them into accepting my out-of-date bod card so it wasn't even that expensive. Henry Clay Frick made his money in steel in Pittsburgh, working in partnership with Carnegie until they fell out and he decided to move to New York. There he had a new mansion designed and built on the edge of Central Park, and filled it with his amazing art collection. In his will he asked that the house be made into a museum and the paintings kept where he has envisioned them, so you see them still hung in the hallway, sitting room, dining room etc. There are sooo many famous pictures, and since none are allowed to be lent out I was very lucky to see them. Some of the most famous is Holbein's portait of Thomase More, The Polish Rider by Rembrandt, and lots of nice impressionists like Renoir. I bought posters of my favourite pictures to put up in the flat next year.

After going back to Ramya's to catch up and drop off my shopping, we both walked back into midtown for supper. I had arranged to meet up with Meghan Pearson, the daughter of the doctor I stayed with in Atlanta. She's just graduated and moved up here to work for Sotherby's, so we had wanted to go to some art galleries together but couldn't find the time. We had a nice dinner chatting together though, only borken by an ambulance careering off the road and crashing outside the restaurant (I did the whole "I'm a med student" thing, but there was already a doctor on the scene sorting them out).

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Photos

Site of the World Trade Centre
I think a new visitor centre is meant to be opening here on the 10th anniversary next month

The american version of a classy Italian plaza
This was ctually right in front of the City Hall

The Queen!
Not actually sure what these mean, but they were all along the pavement