Lower Manhattan, or Downtown as some would fondly call it. We will use the definition that this part of town ends at 14th street.
It was definitely the Dutch that came as the first Europeans trading with the native Americans, naming places New Amsterdam, New Netherlands etc…But fighting took place between the European powers and the locals. Eventually the British prevailed, obtaining control over this southern tip of island in a swap, of all place Suriname!
Today the city is the center of global finance, with the deepest and most liquid market in the world. It also has some of the world’s priciest real estate. But it is also a bastion of ethnic neighborhoods, some of whom have grown to become tourist sites themselves!
So one looks out over the internet one will find so much about the city. Thus this is not a handprint story in the traditional sense. It’s more like our handprint gallery of the places we have touched when in this part of the big Apple. And where we can, we shall add a little spice to it too. Where there is a √, it means we’ve touched it and where there is none…well soon enough.
List of Attractions:
| 9-11 Memorial/WTC √ | Battery Park | Brooklyn bridge √ |
| Charging Bull √ | Chinatown √ | Greenwich village |
| Little Italy √ | Trinity Church √ | Wall Street/NYSE √ |
No photos of Chinatown of our earlier journeys. All we did there was go eat dim sum and bought some American ginseng. Do this all the time so it wasn’t a priority for photo taking…but in recent years when we visited we have seen quite a sea change in the area. Not to mention that quite a few other Chinatowns have emerged too such as those in Brooklyn and Flushing. But the one thing that is still unique here is – you can have local (well for us) delights on the streets such as “cheong fun”!
Little Italy is for all intents just a few streets of cafes and restaurants. There isn’t a neighborhood anymore if we defined it by the number of Italian-Americans living there. But the streets remain filled with an atmosphere unique though it is now “surrounded” by Chinatown!
We were at the southern ferry area ONCE to jump off to liberty island. These days it is so crowded with people that it’s more of a holding area. Q
ueues to buy the ferry ticket snake out from Castle Clinton… there are more hotdog stands here than we can count… More important is; the journey to liberty and Ellis islands respectively. Read more about our visits here.
Charging Bull – got there once years ago when it was not on the radar. These days the funny thing is for some people to pose at its derriere… wonder if it was for luck of something else. For us, not a good position to be Feng Shui wise.
Today again there are more people than the bull. Heheh…for those who want a solitary photo with the bronze sculpture, you’d need to come really early – over a weekend. Wall Street’s kind of non-starter. The collection of buildings where financial giants operate out of, plus the stock exchange is nice for just a quick walk through. Not that we will be working here though.
Brooklyn bridge. We recall some time back people put locks (for love?) on the rails of the bridge. Can’t do that anymore unless you want to risk a fine. The bridge is shared by cyclists and pedestrians alike. And that is a terrible combination when there are lots of camera toting folks walking about in the face of charging cyclists who don’t seem to understand that the bridge is no longer a place to cycle anymore.
That all! For now. Next up, Mid town!
