Day 8 - 9/11 Memorial Museum, Trinity Bar and Football

For the first time this holiday we actually had a late start today! The hotel has kindly given us a free breakfast everyday so we headed down about 9am for this. We had pancakes which were very nice a fluffy, typical American recipe.

American pancakes at the hotel

We then rested in the room for a bit. I popped out for a coffee at a nearby café that I knew from our last visit does excellent coffee.

Coffee and muffin

We left the hotel about 2pm and headed to Smiti’s apartment. She kindly let us do some much needed laundry. Whilst we waited for this we had a chat in her apartment, and then Kathryn and me headed over to the Word Trade Center complex to visit the 9/11 memorial museum.

The museum was just a short walk from Smiti’s apartment. It is still very new, and we weren’t sure what to expect. Our tickets were booked for 4pm. One thing that was immediately obvious was just how busy it was and how many tourists were about. We went straight in due to our pre-booked tickets. There was a short film at the start that included some of the leading figures in the US national and New York local government. This included George Bush, Condalisa Rice and Rudi Gulianni.

Freedom Tower disappearing into the cloud and roof of new subway station in foreground

After that, we were lead downstairs into a large auditorium that had some artifacts, as well as some remaining pieces of foundations from the original twin tower. I didn’t take any pictures, but there was also a section on the history of the WTC and how it was conceived and built. Finally there was a more historical section at the end which included all the details of that fateful day.

We left at 6pm and went to meet Smiti for dinner. We went to a nearby bar and restaurant which had been an old bank vault which had been converted. We had a few drinks as it was still happy hour and some bar food for dinner. After dinner we went back to Smiti’s apartment to watch the Americn Football as her hometome team of Washington were playing. They lost quite heavily so we didn’t really follow it very much and just had some more drinks and snacks.

Trinity Bar and Restaurant

Bar food

Smiti and Kathryn by vault door

We left about midnight, we had a slight issue getting back as the Subway wasn’t running due to maintenance. It was really hot in the Subway so we quickly went back to the street and hailed a taxi. Althought we were staying up in midtown, the taxi only took about 10 inutes as the traffic runs surpsingly well at the at time of night.