Sunday in New York

Sunday in NY

We left our hotel at about 11:00 am to take the subway to the 911 Memorial. We are not very good at subways. Neal always thinks I have some magic way of knowing what direction to take and I am totally direction impaired. Having it be 90 degrees did not help much. After going up and down too many stairs, too many times, we finally got on a train and glory be it was the right train. Dianne gave us such good directions that it is pretty hard to figure out why we were so confused.
We arrived way too early for our tour so we found a little place with air conditioning and split a sandwich.
Our tour began at 1:00 pm. We had tickets that were purchased on line so that made things really easy. We were given head sets so our tour guide would not have to shout. This was perfect for me since I can never hear tour guides at this point in my older age. While we were waiting to get started, we were standing next to a wall with a relief of fireman and policemen. A man who was busy polishing the wall took it on himself to make sure I had a touch tour of all the faces. He showed me that there were female first responders and that there were men and women of all ages and races. My special friend did not work there he just seemed to really love this wall and maybe he was a little in his own world.
Each of our tour guides had a personal story about 911. All the guides are personally connected to the site in some way. One of our guides worked in the South tower on floor 105 and the other was a first responder. They both lost friends and co-workers. I was in tears several times during this tour.
There are so many wonderful things to experience here. I have to admit I was not sure how I felt about doing this but I am very glad I did it. It is meant to be healing and it is.
Next it was back on our best friend the subway. We did a little better this time and we were headed for Time Square.
After another in a long series of cold drinks we met Dianne at the West Side Theater for a play called Old Jews Telling Jokes. This is really honestly true and it was very very funny. The only problem was that it was too short.
We had dinner at Zuni, a restaurant right near the theater. Our food was really good and we enjoyed our last dinner in New York.
We walked through the Port Authority bus station to see the art installations. I love the big statue of Ralph Crandon from the HoneyMooners all dressed up to go to work including his lunch pale.
Then it was back to our hotel and much needed sleep. Being a tourist in 90 degree weather really makes me feel 66. I think I need to travel to cold places.

It is now Monday morning and we will be leaving soon. We had breakfast at the Russian Tea Room. Yes, this is a silly and very expensive thing to do. We had $75 left of our free coupons and the Russian Tea Room is on the list of places we can spend them. So we had a very expensive free breakfast or a free very expensive breakfast. We still managed to go four dollars over but the food really was good. I had an amazing truffle quiche and a salad that was perfect. I am going to go home and live on salads for a while, I promise.
We are hanging around in the room trying to think of something to do. We are meeting a friend for lunch and then getting a 3:00 bus to head home. We should get home around 9:00 tonight. Our bed will feel good. It is raining but that will break the heat wave and we don’t have air conditioning at home.
I will look forward to coming back to New York.