This morning, we continued on our quest to try to work things out with our missing New York Pass. I wrote before that we forgot it in Houston on Friday. We thought we were oh so clever and got our roommate, Vinita, to overnight it to our hotel. But since my name was on the envelope and Audrey’s name was on the room, the hotel wouldn’t take it and were agonizingly close to recovering our investment before it slipped away again. So Monday, we started at the post office where they told us it had been mailed back to Houston as return-to-sender. Thanks to Audrey’s careful eye on reading the fine print on the website, we were able to head to the NYPass office for our next attempt at recovery. We thought we were lost at first because we ended up in the “Bar Office of New York” with lots of bustling lawyer-types passing us by but we eventually found the office and, between the account numbers that we had, were able to replace the card!! I couldn’t stop smiling for the next couple of hours- I was so upset that we’d invested so much money in something, only to completely lose it, but then everything fell into place!
We accidentally found Grand Central Terminal where we ate lunch and got snacks from Magnolia Bakery (yum!) for later. From there, we headed to the 9/11 Memorial which only opened about 6 months ago. It’s on the site of the original towers and is two giant waterfall-type pits where you can’t see the bottom where the water flows out. Around the perimeter of each square are the names of all of those killed in the 9/11 attacks. The water drowns out the sound of nearby traffic and construction and the surrounding trees make the entire site surprisingly peaceful and reflective. Across the street, you can watch the construction on the new World Trade Center and there’s an on-site museum and a visitor’s center around the corner. Even though there were plenty of people there, it was very quite, very solemn, and pretty sobering to see the sheer number of names lining the plaques of those pools.
Names on the 9/11 Memorial
Looking across the 9/11 Memorial
Our next stop was Trinity Church, on Wall Street. Both being big National Treasure fan, we couldn’t help but check out the church when we realized where we were, but no crypt hunting, no treasure, no secret passageways to be found…unfortunately.
Trinity Church and graveyard
Trinity Church entrance
Audrey loves National Treasure
We walked down Wall Street, saw the New York Stock Exchange (not so exciting from the outside), and headed for the South Pier to catch the Staten Island ferry. This free ferry shuttles people back and forth from Manhattan to…you guessed it!…Staten Island. But rather than going to Staten Island, we actually just wanted a good look at the Statue of Liberty. But after the first five minutes, when we were done taking pictures, we discovered that the ferry is a terrific place to catch a free 20 minute nap without going back to the hotel. Win!!
This really doesn't need a caption
After our much-needed nap, we started north again and went into Macy’s, the largest store in the world. Since neither of us have any affection for shopping, we dutifully rode the escalators up 9 floors, “oooh”ed and “ahhhed” at all the stuff, did a quick lap around the floor, and made our way back down- impressed but confused at who on earth buys all the stuff and what human would be brave enough to actually try to shop in this Goliath of a store.
We went and got more obscenely cheap/absurdly good tickets for our show for tonight, Freud’s Last Session, and then headed back to Chinatown for dumplings. (Chinatown three days in a row, I’m sensing a pattern.) After dumplings, we checked out some of the local stands and vendors, sampled things like dried squid, and Audrey bought strange foods to take home. After another quick stop through Rockefeller Center, we headed back to the theater. Our first off-Broadway production and our first play was Freud’s Last Session. It’s basically about a meeting of theologian/pastor C.S. Lewis and psychologist Sigmund Freud during WWII. Audrey and I were both quite disappointed with the outcome. The arguments were choppy and didn’t really leave you with anything to think about- which actually is hard to do using Lewis and Freud. The acting was “meh” and the writing was unimpressive. Hopefully that’s our only dud for the week and it’s all uphill from here. Still a great day though.