Despite the full day that we'd had yesterday, all of us --Sheila included-- had a very disruptive sleep, thanks to the cars passing by, the bigger cars shaking the RV, the random train horns, and general street noise that occurred all through the night. But, it is Manhattan, after all! This is not the city where we'd expect to get a sound night's sleep, particularly given our incredible free parking spot.
A Reunion with Merve
During the COVID pandemic, Lisette had volunteered with an organization called Upwardly Global, providing English lessons to Merve, a lady originally from Turkey who wanted to improve her English at work. She's fluent in English, but at the time needed more confidence in communicating, and also understanding the vast amount of cliches and analogies at work (for some reason there are a ton of sports analogies used in the US workplace, like "knock it out of the park" or "move the goalposts", for example). We both were in San Francisco, but the lessons were done over Zoom during the pandemic, and we ended up meeting in person after the pandemic restrictions lifted.
A couple of years ago, Merve moved to Manhattan to be with her boyfriend, Travis, who had already moved to New York from the Bay Area. It was so great to see them both in their apartment in the neighborhood of Chelsea, and also meet their adopted pup, Taki, a gorgeous little poodle! The dogs were a bit skittish at first, but soon got comfortable in each other's company.
We spent a couple of hours at their apartment, having coffee, catching up, and also each having a shower, which we really appreciated! It's so lovely to have a nice hot shower that isn't a "splash and dash" style in the RV. In fact, it was so nice that, given our poor night's sleep, almost made us fall asleep! Thank you again Merve and Travis for the hospitality, and we hope it won't be too long until we see you next!
Exploring Lower Manhattan
After leaving Merve and Travis' apartment, we had lunch at a nearby Vietnamese restaurant, Pho Dragon (clearly we are on an Asian food kick after having Thai twice as well in Manhattan), for decent food and friendly service. Although clearly we're not in the midwest anymore, because eating out for lunch is a much more costly affair!
We continued walking south since we hadn't done this yesterday, seeing the Ghostbusters Headquarters, which was used in the movies. Located in the Tribeca neighborhood, it's an active New York City Fire Department station for Hook & Ladder Company 8, but has the iconic garage doors and "Ghostbusters" logo painted on the wall outside.
When we were both in US together back in 2011, the memorial for the site of the World Trade Center was still being completed, so we headed over to the One World Trade Center (also known as One WTC or the Freedom Tower, it's the main building of the rebuilt World Trade Center complex , and the tallest building in the US), and the 9/11 Memorial & Museum. While we've been here before and know so much about the events of that fateful day over 20 years ago, it's still shocking and sobering to think about what transpired, and stand on the grounds where it happened. It's definitely worth visiting and standing in contemplation at places like the 9/11 Memorial Pools, beautiful reflecting pools honoring those killed, with their names engraved all around the perimeter.
At Trinity Church in the Financial District, there's a burial ground outside that has many historic figures including Alexander Hamilton (one of the Founding Fathers of the US) and his wife Eliza Hamilton. Is it odd to walk around cemeteries? We've walked around quite a few on this trip so far! In the heart of the Financial District, in Wall Street, is the Charging Bull, a 3-ton bronze sculpture that symbolizes the financial industry (or capitalism, whatever you want to call it). There was a massive tour bus that was parked next to it, so the bull was absolutely surrounded by tourists, lining up to take photos of themselves either next to its face, or sitting next to its shiny testicles (clearly, based on the finish, it has been rubbed by countless hands). The crowd itself was worth a photo, to show how manic it was! We've taken a photo with it before, but took another one (next to its face!) to commemorate this visit.
There were a ton of food trucks nearby, and the wafting smells of the various cuisines almost enticed us to get more food, but we held off, walking towards the Staten Island Ferry Terminal where we could also see the Statue of Liberty Lookout, and recall how Michael almost got run over in this area last time, because he looked the wrong way (cars drive on the opposite side in Australia), to run across the road to buy a hot dog from a food cart! Nearby, we peered into the building that housed the SeaGlass Carousel, a unique carousel where kids and adults were enjoying sitting on iridescent fiberglass fish instead of horses, which were illuminated with undersea-inspired lights.
An engineering and infrastructure feat is the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, the longest continuous underwater road in North America, spanning 9,000 feet (2.74 kilometers). It has a total of four huge ventilation buildings: two in Manhattan, one in Brooklyn, and one on Governors Island that can completely cycle the air inside the tunnel every 90 seconds. Interestingly, during Hurricane Sandy in 2012, it was completely flooded, and 86 million gallons of water had to be pumped out before it could be reopened nearly two weeks after the storm.
A Hawker Center in Midtown Manhattan
We started to get hungry around sunset, but it turns out that many of the food stalls were packing up, so we figured we'd head back to midtown for dinner. What should we eat? Too many options! We got on the subway but still hadn't decided. Michael suggested pizza but we'd passed some of the places we knew about around Little Italy already...well, let's just get off 50th Street, after Times Square, as it's near where we've had dinner the last couple of nights.
As we exited the subway, Michael suddenly suggested Indonesian food, since it's hard to come by...and lo and behold, it turns out that there was a Singaporean food court called Urban Hawker a short stroll away! Designed to be reminiscent of the hawker centers in Singapore, this food court had various Malay options (Singaporean, Indonesian, Malaysian and Filipino cuisine), plus a couple of other Asian stalls, serving Japanese and Indian food. Hurray! Michael ordered Beef Rendang and got to chatting to the man working at the stall, Andrew, who hailed originally from Indonesia, about his multiple travels to his home country (Michael has been there 13 times), etc, and even got a free coconut/pandan/rose drink. Lisette ordered lontong (a Singaporean coconut curry vegetable stew). The food court was rather dim, but the food was great and we could tell it was a place frequented by a lot of Malay expats, who were here to have a slice of home.
After this, it was back on the subway (we learned we could just swipe our credit card to pay for a ticket by the door, rather than get a single-use ticket, which turned out to be a bit cheaper). Fortunately it wasn't as busy, and we got a seat all the way back to our stop, getting into our RV and flopping into bed exhausted after another action-filled day.