This was an OAT kind of day with lunch and dinner on our own. We set out to catch a 10 AM ferry from the marina to Wall Street only to find that the last ferry from that pier left at 9:45, oops. We walked over to the Liberty Ferry pier and caught the 10:30 to the foot of the World Trade Center. So our first stop was the 9/11 Memorial and Freedom Tower. For many this is a familiar view. We walked into the Memorial area
and viewed the very moving inverse fountains with the water flowing down from the top into the negative space on the footprint of the towers. With the names of the responders who lost their lives on the railing
this is a very moving tribute to the willingness of our first responders to go into harms way to save others.
What I have to say next may offend, I do not mean in any sense to do so, but I understand that many people will disagree with me. The entire construction of this elaborate and well done memorial does as much to remind me of the dedication and commitment of the vilest people on earth, the perpetrators of the inhumane crime that brought down the towers. Their leader, those who survive, can look at this memorial and see the impression they have made on the psyche of the American people and in their warped minds they can revel in it. It would be almost better if we had done what Israelis do when a suicide bomber exploded amidst civilians, they clean up the area thoroughly and restore it to its former state rapidly so there’s no place for the family of the suicide bombers to look to as a memorial to their heinous act. I do understand the need for the families of those who died to have a memorial, but I question the result.
On to less serious matters if you are still with me. We walked. We walked. Somehow we made it from the Memorial into SoHo stopping for lunch on W Broadway at CentoNovo, an Argentinian Restaurant where we both had salads before we continued walking. We roamed SoHo looking for the many galleries we remember from years past. There are a meager few remaining with most of the best locations taken over by shops you can find in any mall in the country, actually in the world. Does the world really need another Old Navy cheek by jowl with you pick a name from your nearest mall? Ack! Boring! And we walked. And we did find a few galleries and had some interesting discussions. In one gallery which had a pushy salesman and a lot of familiar looking limited editions on paper I turned a corner and was confronted with a Miro which hangs to this day in our apartment. I was stunned to see the asking price of $22,000 as we have it insured for about $6,000. Of course mine is numbered in Arabic numbers and this one was XVII/ LXXX which I am sure makes it worth so much more than ours. I told the pushy salesman that we live in a motorhome so no amount of pushing was going to have any effect on my having a place to put any art. I refrained from suggesting he go play in traffic as it was his gallery.
And we walked. Have I mentioned that we walked a bit? Eventually we stopped in a coffee shop on Greene and Houston, Amor, where I had an iced cappuccino and Carol sat still for a bit. We thought of taking a cab to the ferry, I even signed up for Uber and found nothing available. We located a subway station only two blocks away and we walked to it. Once we got off the train we had to walk to the ferry and from the ferry we walked to the motorhome. According to my pedometer we walked just over 10 miles.