This was our second day of manic sight seeing where we did everything else we planned to do the first day! we started off on one of those red open top bus tours of downtown manhattan which wasn't as good as the previous ones we had been on but it was informative all the same! our first stop was ground zero and words cannot describe how sad it was being there, seeing it, reading the timeline of events, looking at the pictures, listening to the protestors and people reading out obituaries of their loved ones, it was so hard to imagine buildings even standing there let alone collapsing. we met a guy in florida who was there and saw the whole thing from the planes going in the towers to the collapsing of the buildings and he said it still haunts him now. the new freedom tower sounds good, 1776 feet tall (year of independence) which i think if I'd heard about in england may have thought it cheesy, but seeing ground zero it kinda seems nice and appropriate somehow. i don't know if you know but 8 buildings were actually destroyed, 5 others collapsed within days of it happening and the 8th building was announced chemically unsafe whilst we were there and will be collapsed soon i guess. only 1 building has been rebuilt so far which opened this august.

our next stop was the statue of liberty tour, we only did the cruise, we had the option of getting off at liberty island but because you can only go in the feet and we had so much we wanted to do we decided to just admire her from the boat! so theres one of her face on and one of her with me and gav - looking very nice too!

the next stop was a tour of madison square garden aka the worlds greatest arena, the pic here is of the main arena where they host everything from ice hockey, basketball, dog shows, concerts, and loads more that i just can't remember! we also went into the locker rooms - the basketball one has doors 7ft tall - even so some players still have to bend down to get in! and the hockey doors are 6ft wide so they can get in and out with all their padding on - very clever! everything about the places was very impressive!

after madison square garden we went up to the guggenheim museum and gav and i have definitely decided that we are very uncultured because although there was some very good artwork we just didn't get most of it! there was a big display of the guy who does the splattered paintings that look like a 5 year old has done them (i thnk his name was Pollock), and even though we listened to an explanation of the brilliance of the work we just couldn't see it!! but we felt good because we could tick off going to an art museum from our must dos before we die list, plus i'd read about the museum and wanted to go but thats neither here nor there!