24.08.2007 – 25.08.2007

We had been to New York for another previous visit, so we have already seen a lot of the big monuments and buildings so we set out to see a few other things we didn’t have time for the previous visit. We started up 5^th Avenue and soon came upon a curious sight of at least 1000 firefighters in their ceremonial uniforms lining up along the street. We asked a local who couldn’t believe that we hadn’t heard that during the previous week a couple of Firefighters lost their lives fighting a fire in an old bank building near Wall Street. This was the funeral procession. It was quiet and the line of firefighters stretched as far up the road as we could see. They paraded the coffin on the back of a fire-truck and the families followed.

We then had a look in a few shops, including Saks on Fifth. We headed up to Central Park. Last time we only saw the park at night time on a horse drawn cart. We spent some time exploring the southern 3^rd of the park. The gardens are pretty with lots of places for children to play and climb rocks, and lots of people laying about on the grass. There is a zoo, lots of large grassy fields for playing sports, and gardens with lakes and statues. It is really serene in contrast to the metropolis surrounding it which is guess is the point. We exited the park on the West side to go and explore the American Museum of Natural History. They had a special frog exhibit so we went to that as well.

The following day we looked through the Guggenheim Museum. The building itself is really something to see. The building is shaped like a slightly deformed cylinder and when you look up from the foyer, you can see all the way to the roof of the building. The path through the gallery spirals up along the walls of the main part of the building and there is an annex where they show more collections. We found some of the conceptual art a bit of a stretch to interpret, but a lot of the modern art from the early 1900s was really impressive.

We also spent time in the Soho area, and Little Italy and right down to Ground Zero and Wall Street. Ground Zero didn’t really look much different to when we saw it 3 years ago, just a bit tidier maybe. Wall Street was quiet because it was a weekend, mainly just tourists. We then headed along the south east bank below the Brooklyn Bridge where we were offered numerous opportunities to buy fake Rolexes and hand bags.