Headed downtown today, and after a wander round Battery Park, took a ferry over to Staten Island for the rest of the day.
Battery Park is named for the cannons that used to form part of the defenses in colonial times, and like a lot of the downtown area, is built on reclaimed land - look up a map of the NY coastline today, against a couple hundred years ago! It's amazing how much of it didn't exist!
It also contains one of several memorials to Sept 11th, in this case, the mangled remains of one of the statues that stood at the WTC. Ground Zero itself is simply a building site now, but it's impressive how fast the new tower is going up.
The Staten Island ferry is a great way to do some free sightseeing - the views as you cross the harbour are fab.
The island itself is mostly residential - it's the closest we've seen to the movie idea of US suburia. We headed down to the mall and discovered that the island is a LOT bigger that we realised. In fact, it took about an hour on the bus! We'll go back next time, but plan to spend the day, as the mall it huge.
Back on Manhattan we wandered round the South Street Seaport, and had a late dinner at Johnny Rockets diner.
Last full day tomorrow, I can't believe how fast it's gone!
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