Another wonderfully sunny day dawned in NYC, although the temperature had dipped, a top of 10 degrees today, we hit the streets when it was only five degrees. 

We’d planned on catching up with Bob and Cathy and confirmed lunch with them in the World Trade Centre district. 

Saturday is house keeping day in our apartment, so we were up early tidying up a bit. It’s been a busy start to our trip this year so our apartment was a bit of a mess. We had a quick breakfast in and pottered around before heading out for lunch. 

Weekend subway times are less frequent than weekdays, so we gave ourselves a few extra minutes. The lift took forever to arrive, in the end we gave up and walked the ten flights down. 

We took the familiar walk from our hotel to Times Square – 42nd Street subway station. I’ll have to do a time lapse photo of the walk one day. 

We hop on the train, a number 3 and ride to a Christopher street in the financial district. When we arrive we have about a ten minute walk to the restaurant. El Vez, a nice sounding Mexican place. We see Bob and Cathy and sit and catch up on the last 12 months. The waiter pops over twice to take our order and we haven’t even looked! We eventually order.

Mardi gets some nice looking chicken tacos and I order my favourite, Nachos. 

Our food arrives, Mardi, Bob and Cathy’s lunch arrive on normal sized plates. Mine on the other hand arrives firstly with a stand. Then a tray the size of a massive extended family pizza. On the tray is my nachos. Delicious , but about 12 meals in one.  

We chat after we finished our meals and then go for a walk. We walk through Brookfield place, to the Oculus, Westfield and WTC number four. 

The whole precinct has been rebuilt after the 9/11 tragedy. It’s an amazing space. Check out the photos. 

During our walk we see an art exhibit, CAN-STRUCTION. The exhibit show things constructed out of cans of food donated to needy people and is designed to raise awareness of hunger. The structures are designed and made by construction and engineering students. Check out more here: http://www.canstruction.org. 

We marvel at the structures. A wolf, parrot, construction site, naughty rat stealing pizza, a Sonic the hedgehog and more. 

Amazing stuff. 

We then walk underground taking in the enormity of the building project that’s taken 15 years to complete. 

The oculus, which resembles the skeleton of a blue whale heaves above ground, with a massive underground shopping centre.

We wander more interested in the architecture then the high end shops. Although we pop into the Apple Store, we’ve been to all of them in Manhattan so we could let this one slip by. 

We wend our way out onto the street, departing through WTC 4 and have a hot chocolate at Aroma and sit and chat to Bob. Cathy left us a little while ago and headed home. 

The Day quickly slips away as we sit and chat over hot chocolate. 

We then catch the subway home using Park Place. Interestingly the original oculus artwork is in this subway station, the namesake of the new massive structure. 

We jump on a train and in a couple of stops realize we are headed for Brooklyn. Whoops. We change trains and head uptown, the right direction. 

We get home and decide to have a light dinner in our room and some American tv. A nice relaxing Saturday night. More anti Trump protests are planned so we think about not doing anything. With 30 minutes of getting home we start to hear a chant. It gets louder and louder. Thousands of people then swarm through Times Square. We hear yelling and screaming as the throng makes its way to Trump Tower. Safer inside, we decide not to go anywhere.


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