On Monday morning, we grabbed a Starbucks breakfast and then took a taxi over to the 9/11 Memorial. You can't help but gaze up at the new Freedom Tower. It's beautiful.
We started by viewing the fountains built on top of the former World Trade Centers which are surrounded by the names of all the individuals who died on 9/11.
This picture is the first to greet you inside the memorial. It was taken just a few minutes before the first plane hit.
After seeing a timeline of events from the day, you see this structure and hear people from around the world talking about what a beautiful day it was, how they heard about the attack, and what they were thinking as the day unfolded.
The iconic picture taken a little while later of all the smoke pluming into the air.
This art piece was amazing. There is one blue square for each person who passed away that day. Each square represents the artist's take on all the different shades of blue. Most people who remember the day of 9/11 specifically remember what a beautiful blue day it was, but everyone sees blue just a little bit different.
This was a replica of what was drawn on the firehouse door for the station that lost its entire company as they went to help people.
One of the fire trucks mangled from the destruction
There were several commemorative art pieces throughout the memorial, like these.
A piece of steel which was totally bent after one of the planes hit it.
I thought this was really cool. You write a message on the board and a minute later it projects it up onto the wall with everyone else's message. It was really neat to see all the messages, especially those in different languages; it was a good reminder that this day impacted the whole world.
Outside was the pretty Survivor's Tree. This tree was buried in the rubble, but nursed back to health. Today it stands as a tribute to those who survived.
After a beautiful and humbling morning at the 9/11 Memorial, we ubered over Sugar Factory. It was super cool! They have these huge drinks that bubble and smoke when they pour the mixture in. Lily got the "Lollipop Passion" while I got "The Drake."
Lily had these fun and bright sliders for lunch; she loved the little souvenir ducky that came with it too. I had a delicious burger and fries. This was such a fun and tasty meal!
After lunch we made our way to the Staten Island Ferry Whitehall terminal. We got to take a free ferry ride to Staten Island and back which provided fantastic views of Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty.
After the ferry ride, we decided to take a nice, slow, long walk back to our hotel. We saw lots of neat New York City items along the way. First up was the Friends pop up which was celebrating the 25th anniversary of the show. Tickets sold out almost immediately so we couldn't go in, but we walked through the gift shop and saw the Central Perk set up. We also saw one of the beautiful cathedrals from the movie National Treasure; I love that movie.
We stopped in at the Strand Bookstore because it's huge and bookstores are always awesome. We also stopped in to see Carlo's Bakery which is owned by Buddy Valastro. We didn't try anything but it looked delicious.
For dinner we ate at Junior's Diner; it was pretty good, and Lily loved her Dr. Brown's Cream Soda.
We ended the day at Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum. It had all sorts of fascinating oddities in it that was fun to explore. This was a huge wall mural made out of postage stamps.
This is Lou Gerigh's famous speech that was written and drawn into a picture.
These were interesting. The Statue of Liberty is made out of puzzle pieces while the John Lennon one is made out of dog hair.
The gorilla was made out of recycled tire pieces. You can't help but compare your height to the world's tallest recorded man. Lily didn't even come up his waist.
We did a ton of walking today, but it was so cool to see so much of the city.
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