Despite my tiredness last night I managed to coordinate booking tickets on line for the 9/11 Memorial museum next to Ground Zero. We braved the Metro again and were able to get in half an hour ahead of our allotted time.
It is very difficult to summarise the museum save to say we spent 4.5 hours there. We watched A/V’s, saw original parts of the foundations of the twin towers and even bits of the mangled steel frame that has been preserved. The museum is exceptionally well laid out leading you from area to area covering the build up, media coverage, rescues and personal stories both of victims and survivors. I think you would have to be pretty constrained or hard hearted not to shed a tear at some point at the sheer scale of destruction and sadness of personal accounts along with awe at the sacrifice that so many people made on that day to help others. The display also included a section on the Pentagon attack, which was relevant as we had only visited the memorial there a couple of says earlier.
My back was hurting from standing all that time and by lugging my camera and bag but it was well worth it. A rather sobering day which we tried to lighten by heading back to our new favourite food hall. Afterwards we wanted an upbeat end to the day so had only a two minute wait, if that, to book tickets to go up the rebuilt Trade Centre - now called One New Trade Centre. Amazing views if not rather commercial with sales attempted to be made at every turn. Despite that the views over the Hudson river and towards Brooklyn were amazing and I managed to get some good shots without reflections by using some contortionist bends to get my lens right up to the glass.
This image is a quote from Virgil that is close to the entrance of the museum and sums up the exhibition, it is also in beautiful blue glazed tiles - my favorite colour. I took some photographs of the exhibition for our own interest but it does not seem right to post them.
