Battery Park 'n Stuff

The exploration of NY continues! Today Anmol and I went all around the south of Manhattan. We took a tour via Lonely Planet. It went a little something like this...
Battery Park. First we wandered around Bowling Green, and the followed the tourists to the water. People were lined up for the ferries, but we were content with the view of Lady Liberty from the shore. Take a minute to read Emma Lazarus's The New Colossus. My sister teaches it in her NYU classes (ooooooooo). If It doesn't inspire you, nothing will.

For further inspiration we turned to Starbucks, it was chilly out!



The Sphere. The sculpture once stood in the World Trade Center plaza for thirty years. It was damaged in the attacks. Ironically, it symbolized world peace. Now an eternal flame (or shika in Hindi) stands in front of it.

We then went up to the Financial District and visited Anmol's future places of employment. We tried to take pictures with the Charging Bull sculpture, but there was a truckload of tourists taking pictures one by one (not in convenient groups I offered to organize for them!).









Here is the Fraunces Tavern museum and restaurant. It was built in the 1700s. Beyond that, and looking real cute, I'm not sure of its importance.

This is a sweet street called Stone just off of Beaver (named for the pelts once sold there) and Pearl (similarly named). It's buildings date to pre-Civil War, and I'm sure the cobblestones are twice as old. It reminded me a bit of being in London. From there we wandered over to Wall Street (named for a wall Dutch slaves built there to keep out marauders). We visited Trinity Church (not pictured) and peeked at the graveyard which serves as the eternal bed for such exciting people as Benedict Arnold.










Wall Street, all gussied up!


























What it's like to be inside a Christmas Tree!

The patriotic New York Stock Exchange

We also visited the WTC area, Ground Zero and a few other sites. It was a great tour and left us both exhausted. What next?