Wat to see at the WTC.

Of course the major event in NYC in recent history was the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Last time I was here, the area was still a construction site. Last time flickums was here, the twin towers were still standing. These days, it's a memorial park, with two large pools. Deep pits with waterfalls cascading down the side; located at the footprints of where the towers used to stand. Around the pools are panels with the names of all the victims (including those on the planes and in the Penatagon, and those of the 1993 bombing). On their birthday, the staff place a rose on their name.

Of course, there is now a newer, taller WTC one building - the new holder of the title of tallest building in the US at 1776 feet.

There's also a memorial museum. From the outside it's rather unassuming. However, it is a lot larger than it looks. The main area is unerground, and it covers most of the area of the original building. The footprints of the towers extend downwards into the display area, and inside are the various displays. This includes a section about the construction of the towers, a memorial room, where the names of victims are read out, and friends and family talk about them (I presume it goes through every name over the course of several days), and a small film theatre in one of them, and a much larger display going into detail about the events of the day. A lot has been preserved. A crushed fire truck, the stairs that the survivors escaped down, and a lot of trinkets belonging to the victims.

We were there a lot longer tan we expected, so we worked out what to do with the rest of the day. I felt a boat trip would be nice. We'd missed the last regular one, but there are evening sightseeing trips around the Statue of Liberty. The boat left from the hipster area by the harbourside, so we stopped in a hipster bar and had hipster burgers. I had a hipster beer with this.

Finished with plenty of time to get to the boat. I felt very anxious every time flickums leant over to take a photo because I was projecting my butterfingerness and was worried she'd drop it. As it happens she didn't. We had a fantastic view of the city at sunset.

So we wrapped up the day with a trip to the rooftop bar that they sold us on when we booked the hotel. Flick had a lukewarm coke. I had an okayish cocktail. There was a certain charm to the place, being all the way up on the 19th floor, but I've been to better rooftop bars.

Dance your cares away

Last full day in NYC.

Had breakfast at Grand Central, because it's cheap, and then headed off to the Museum of the Moving Image. This is stuck out in the less fashionable Queens area, but it wasn't too hard to get to by subway. It's a fairly small museum but does have an excellent Jim Henson sxhibition, with puppets from Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock, the Muppets, of course, and the Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. Presumably a lot of these are retired puppets that they've since replaced, because I gather they're still making Sesame Street. They also have alot of production sketches and videos about how some of the more anamatronic things work.

They also had some interactive displays. One where we could dub over classic films. Naturally I improved the dialogue. One where we could add sound effects to a film. Naturally I chose the silly ones - they were well aware that people would want to do that because they had silly options.

I got a little distracted by the vast collection of vintage TVs. The dramatic recustion in size that transistors allowed was incredible. The things went from the size of a cabinet to a box slightly larger than the CRT.

I realised I hadn't foiund out what had happened to "The Sphere" - the sculpture that was in the plaz at WTC. It was displayed nearby last time I was here and I assumed it would have been in the museum but no. It's actually in liberty park just beside the WTC memorial. Took some photos of that, and went off to find a classic diner.

The plce we found seemed to be in a bit of a trashy area. There was a woman with kids yelling at some guy in a wheelchair, and a guy told us about Jesus and how he was coming to save us. Also the place was very closed. Found another diner in a much nicer part of the city. I had a mac and cheese burger because I was bemused about how you could make such a concoction. Flickums had omelette because it had cheese in and she's a mouse.

Flickums was happy to call it a day at this point. I wanted to try out the "Raines Law Rooms" - spakeasy type bar named after the "Raines' Law" that tried to outlaw bars and saloons, but had exceptions for hotels. So the bars would add 8 rooms, which was enough to consider them hotels. A side effect was that they became very popular with prostitutes.