You know how there is always some "big city" of your childhood? Like, if you grow up in Nebraska, maybe it's Omaha, and if you grow up in eastern Washington perhaps it's Spokane, or if you're from Florida it's Tampa. You can be used to going to Omaha or Spokane or Tampa and still be totally blown away when visiting New York. But it's hard to be used to going to New York and be blown away by Omaha or Spokane or Tampa or... anywhere, really. So when New York City is "the city" of your childhood, you're kinda hard to impress sometimes.
That's not to say that I'm city-savvy. I think I was pretty good when I was in high school and during the first half of college, but now that I've lived away for seven years and haven't spent an extended amount of time at home for five of those years, I find myself getting "misplaced" (I prefer to use that word rather than "lost," because I think "lost" connotes hopelessness, whereas "misplaced" implies that I've only gone slightly off-course and will be righted soon) more often than I ever used to.
One thing I can definitely recommend to anyone visiting New York is that you should have a plan. Have places you want to go and know where they are. There is always a time and a place for spontaneity, and I'm hardly saying you should put a chokehold on your schedule, but I've done New York both ways - wandering around aimlessly and going in with an agenda - and personally, I prefer the latter.
It's especially useful in New York because, since the buildings are so tall and there are just so damn many streets, it's very easy to miss what you wanted to see. For example, we had to basically spiral around inward on streets around in order to find the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site - there's no way we would have found it if we didn't know it was there. Had we just wandered around the city, we certainly would have missed it - and I'm glad we made it there, because it was pretty awesome.
But anyhow, I promised you pictures, so here are some pictures - these were all taken on June 16 (wow, that was a long time ago!). I present you with a random sampling of lower Manhattan before I move on to more specific locales.
Click any image to make it larger in Photobucket.
Buildings. I like buildings. This is somewhere down in the Financial District.
17 more images below the jump...
Patrick looks awfully befuddled by technology as we stumble down Wall Street.
I loled. He is the epitome of pure evil. Or maybe that's the New York Stock Exchange. One or the other.
We spent a bit of time in the Battery. This is a super-creepy American Merchant Mariners' Memorial. The water splashes up and down on the guy falling into the water, sometimes covering him, sometimes leaving most of his body above the waves. I didn't like it, and by that I mean I liked it. It's supposedly based on a photograph, taken by Nazis, of American soldiers after their vessel was destroyed. I can't find the image online, but I'd love to find it sometime.
The Universal Soldier is a Korean War monument in Battery Park. Patrick is more a fan of military history than I am.
Of course we had to get down to the South Street Seaport.
I have always loved the juxtaposition of tall ships and tall buildings.
I've got something to sell you... The Seaport has the best views of the Brooklyn Bridge.
This was for sale in one of the shops at the South Street Seaport... A big MetroCard (the card for the subway) made of lots of little MetroCards. Love it.
Lower Manhattan contains the oldest sections of New York - I'm pretty sure these buildings date back to the Revolution.
This building definitely dates back to the Revolution. It's the Fraunces Tavern, in which George Washington gave a farewell address to the Continental Army in 1783. The Tavern also has a museum, but it costs $10 per person so we had to be content to view it from the outside.
Fire station. Whatever happened to architects who made even mundane buildings look cool?
Guess where we're headed. Go on, guess.
We got dinner in Chinatown, which was great - here's Pat with his Chinese beer. He got chicken and bananas, which was actually quite good. Wandering down Canal Street is just as obnoxious, oppressive and marvelous as I remembered it from high school, when friends from out of state wanted to go score some fake Coach purses.
Chinese restaurant menu
And then, just like that, we were in Little Italy. Walk through Little Italy and, just like people in Chinatown heckle you to buy knockoff purses and watches, the folks in Little Italy hound you to eat at their restaurants. They offer to bring you a complementary Sangria right to your table, they say they want to give you free cannolis, anything at all to get you to eat there. Sorry, guys, but we want chicken and bananas.
As you can see, we took a pretty extensive tour around Lower Manhattan that day. The next day we moved on to Midtown.
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