Downtown part 2

To continue from the last post...we're still walking around Battery Park area. The whole area we walked isn't the actual park, it is just waterfront, but I'm calling the whole thing Battery Park regardless. The park itself is at the tip of Manhattan

I took quite a few pictures of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island from a couple different areas. Unfortunately, my camera doesn't have the greatest zoom lens, so the pictures are all pretty far out.

This was a cool "pirate" ship that was sailing around the area. I think it was actually giving tours because it was really crowded, but I'm going to pretend its a pirate ship anyway.

Pretty neat flowers...I called them giant purple dandelions, which is clearly wrong, but that is what they look like

This is Pier A. It has apparently been under renovation for a long time, with no real end in site. The renovation site is surrounded by fencing with big covered tarps with quotes about NYC from people like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Helen Keller. From what I managed to find online about it, which wasn't a lot, it was built in 1886, housed the Department of Docks, and a lot of famous people passed through. Here is a link of what the Museum of the City of New York says about it, which isn't much, and a picture of what it use to look like.

I guess this area was called the Gardens of Remembrance (or that is what the stairs said) and there were a ton of memorials.

This is the Universal Solider, Korean War Memorial. Surrounding the statue is a circle with all the countries that fought in the war and the number of wounded, dead, and M.I.A. It was really interesting to see the numbers.

If you look at the bottom of his foot in this one you can see the Statue of Liberty through it. In person the Statue of Liberty is much more visible, but it was really hard to get in a picture.

Some really random memorial given to the US by the Norwegian Merchant Marines and the Royal Norwegian Navy for help during WWII.

American Merchant Mariners' Memorial (it is a little scary)

Then we walked through Castle Clinton for about 30 seconds. There wasn't all that much to see and we were tired and thirsty. Castle Clinton was completed in 1811 and was part of a defense system set up to protect NYC from the British, in the led up to the War of 1812. It was used as an immigration processing place before Ellis Island and was also the NYC Aquarium until 1941.

Picture of New York in 1767

Not much to see

This is a WWII memorial. It says that it is for service members who now rest in the American coastal waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

Derek in front of one of the many stone slabs with US Navy names on it.

Pointing to what his job is (was? I guess still is technically)

I couldn't get them all in but there are 4 of these stone slabs and another set of four on the other side. They were inscribed front and back.

Some more flowerssssssssss

Cool old church randomly in the middle of huge modern building. It allowed Derek to use his word of the month, dichotomous. He probably used it 80 times in a row.

This was the sphere in the World Trade Center. They have it in Battery Park next to an eternal flame. While we were there we were next to a man and his son, who looked about 7. The man was reading the sign to the boy in some other language and then in English explaining what happened on Sept. 11th. I didn't really think much of it but Derek said, "Isn't that weird that the man had to explain to the little boy what this all meant," I asked why and he said, "because the kid doesn't remember it." And it was like whoa, there are a whole generation of little people running around that don't remember what happened 8 years ago, something we remember so vividly. Makes me feel old. It was just a weird experience.

Ok, so that was MORE than enough for part 2.