Saturday, June 21, 2014

Camino 2014: Day 0.2 New York (Mimi)


I learned quickly that airplanes do not suit me well.  Still recovering from yesterday's night flight and a nice nap after that, I still did not feel fully rested.  

Day two in New York City consisted of sleeping in until 10:30-ish and we took our showers before the long day began.  Breakfast was simply the stash of bagels and croissants Emily had bought in Portland airport.  With a hearty morning mid-day walk we headed to the pier to meet our destiny; the ferry boat tour of Manhattan.  


This boat ride was like no other. One, it was in New York, but also due to us being in NYC,  if you wanted to take a picture, expect twenty other people to be in it with you!  We had many many people in the tour who did not speak English which allowed us to enjoy the different dialogues that surrounded our booth.  

Traffic, immense traffic, surrounded us and I continuously was on my toes ready to dodge a speeding taxi.  We went to get Villa (Pizza) so Em could cross off her bucket list, 'eating pizza in New York' and spotted people walking with Coldstone IceCream, so guess where went next. 

Retreating with our ice cream, another tour bus came so we headed now to the southern part if Manhattan.  We have our bags the whole time so trying to learn how to walk with the bags for the entire day was interesting.  As we headed down to the southern region, our main goal was to see the Twin Towers Memorial.

This historic spot, the Twin Towers Historical Site, held great meaning to March, but I was only five when the Towers were hit.  As he walked ahead to take in the historic values of the site, we held back, giving him space, staring down into the 30 ft fountain.  Real quick fact, the new World Trade Center is 1,776 ft tall.

As I saw all these people there was a quiet sense of sadness and mourning, but barely 20 yards from the North Tower stood the new World Trade Center.  The somber aura was quickly covered by hope and I realized something.  Despite, me barely knowing the history of the Twin Towers, as I was only five years old at the time, this was one of the events that was supposed to divide our country, but it didn't. "E Pluribus Unum"  


So we had barely an hour before we needed to get to the airport to head to Copenhagen, so we were going to take a bus, funny thing is, we couldn't find one that we to Central Park in our allotted hour.  We unfortunately returned to the tour bus and made it to Central Park to get a picture! 

And let us end the day with a grand recognition of the next six to seven hour plane ride. I will tell of how terribly fun we had walking again through security this time hoping our bags were light enough and stressing about our passport legitimacy. So lights out was at midnight- thirty after we boarded our plane 45 minutes late and had a wonderful take-off that accelerated us up to 41,000 ft (12,476 km) over the Atlantic Ocean.

Off to Denmark!
Mimi

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