New York

Into the New York subway today and down to visit to the 9/11 Memorial.

The new One World Trade Center building is enormous - 104 stories high and the tallest skyscraper in the western hemisphere - but I have to ask myself, why would they build another one? The final component, the spire on top was put in place in October 2013 and standing directly beneath the main entrance and looking up is a little daunting to say the least!

The 2 reflection pools in themselves are a brilliant memorial to those killed in the 9/11 attacks, each 'group' of people having their names grouped with each other and engraved around the edge of the pools. One of the pools surrounds, basically has every name from the North Tower where the majority of people perished.

Another walk to the foreshore, the USS Intrepid Museum is a World War 2 Aircraft Carrier and now permently on display on the Hudson River in New York. It, like many other aircraft carriers I guess, is a huge vessel and as part of the display, holds numerous aircraft on it's hangar deck including the dark and sleek blackbird high altitude reconnaisance aircraft, and a bunch of high level military aircarft - none of which I have any idea of!! Kemm enjoyed it of course.

Wandered around the upper flight deck and then through the hangar deck where "lots of stuff' was on display. Well explained by me (NOT) but this was Kemm's outing!

It was an early morning start out of Toronto this smorning with a 3am wake-up call! A 30 min traffic free run to the airport had us arrive along with many others arrive about an hour before the immigration gates opened for entry into the US. Roll on 4.30am and the quese were building. Made our turn up to the automated passport booth only to find we had been directed into the wrong queue - we were in the US and Canadian queue for automated passport control - wrong! Over to the other queue please ..... ho hum, anyway made it down to the gate no problems and all aboard for the quick 1 1/2 hour flight to New York.The reasons we did all the immigration checks in Toronto were obvious - into the US there was nothing! We were in!

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