2019 Healy World Cruise : Sunday July 21

The crew show last night was most entertaining with one of the performers being an excellent drummer.

The Geelong game was a disappointment both from the standard of Geelong’s play and the fact that our reception was not too good and the game kept fading in and out. We eventually gave up and we watched the ship enter New York Harbour under the Verrazano Bridge in the early hours of the morning. We left our curtains open and an hour later I woke to see the Statue of Liberty perfectly framed in our window.

Today we had intended going on a 9 am tour of the 9/11 Memorial complex and then catching up with John and Caroline who are in New York. Unfortunately, we did not clear customs until 12:10 pm. There was a large ship with 5000 people on board ahead of us. When we returned to the ship at 4:30 it was too hot to catch up with them. However, after showers and a rest and the knowledge that we only had one night in New York we got second wind and had a late night tour of New York.

After hours of walking, I am now starting to understand how New York fits together. Manhattan is a small Island 13 miles long and 2.5 miles across. The Verrazano Bridge links Brooklyn to Statten Island and the three bridges known as the BMW, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Manhattan Bridge and the Williamsburg Bridge link Manhattan and Brooklyn.

The 9/11 Memorial is such a peaceful sight. It has two large pools in the footprints of the two towers with waterfalls tumbling down into the ponds. When the towers were there we looked up to the top of the towers, now we look down to where the water falls into the ponds. The names of the people who died on this tragic day are embossed onto the surrounds of the pool and public is invited to touch these names. There is lots of greenery around to add to the peaceful setting. One of the trees is a pear tree that survived the eleventh of September. It was in a very sad state but it was nursed back to health and now is flush with leaves and is a testament to the fact that we can survive the most atrocious devastating acts. The oculus, near the pools of remembrance, is a different type of architecture that looks like the wings of a dove. On the eleventh of September each year, the wings are opened up. Inside is bustling with activity as there is a two storey apple shop, and various other stores and restaurants as well as an underground station.

Down in the Wall Street area, Bill rubbed the nose of the Bull. Evidently this is what you do if you are an investor. The statue of the defiant girl is there to remind us that women can be investors as well as men. This is the area where the New Yorkers hold their ticker tape parades. It is important for each one to be grander than the one before and the way the success of the parade is measured is that they collect all the paper in bags and weigh them after the parade.

We saw where John Lennon was murdered and where Yoko Ono still lives. Across the road in a 6.5 acre park there is a memorial to John. This is the park where John and Yoko used to walk and has now been dubbed Strawberry Fields. We saw the Empire State building and the flat iron building and tonight we watched the sunset over the Brooklyn Bridge.

This is an exciting city, which, as the song says, never sleeps. It is a city where development keeps going. It is bustling and at times can be overwhelming when you get caught up with thousands of people in Times Square. We loved our day in this picturesque, vibrant city, but would have preferred it to have been a little cooler.