chrismas eve

/ WWII memorial /

on christmas eve day, we were planning on taking the ferry out to liberty and ellis islands, but we got there a bit later than anticipated and lines were miles long. we found out that tickets to the crown of the statue of liberty sell out something like 3 months in advance as well.

/ reuben and miss liberty in the background /

so we decided to flag the islands for the day and see wall street instead. we were lucky to have a beautiful, sunny day for wandering around downtown. so we started by strolling down water street to the south street seaport so we could get a good view of the brooklyn bridge.

/ reuben at the seaport /

it turned out to be a great stop - first we had some chocolate covered strawberries at the godiva shop, then i had a waffle on a stick from wafels & dinges (the only food truck i managed to visit the whole trip!), and then we all stopped for some afternoon snacks and christmas cocktails at unos.

/ sunny view of brooklyn bridge /

after our food stop, we walked up wall street so reuben could drool over the place where he wants to work so badly!

/ reuben at the stock exchange /

it was a bit odd to wander around in this area because despite living on water street for a whole year, i feel like i never explored it. it's certainly different from the rest of manhattan in that there are no shops and little flair, but it has a pretty rich sense of history. i started reading edward rutherford's novel 'new york' right before i left on this trip and i was surprised to learn how much of new york's early history occurred in the lower manhattan area.

/ reuben touched by the hand of gw /

next order of business once we saw the stock exchange was to find the bull! as we didn't have a map, we asked one of the security officers to point us in the right direction - big mistake! we were on a wild bull chase for nearly half an hour until finally someone in a deli put on the right path. we got there only to find it SWAMPED by asian tourists. luckily reuben isn't shy so he just pushed right in to get a picture.

/ reuben making everyone give him a turn /

we sat at bowling green for a little while in the sun and contemplated where to go next. we decided to go up to see the flat iron building.

/ flat iron building /

unfortunately i don't know much about this area of town (other than the museum of sex and one or two theatres where nitya used to perform), so this was pretty much all we saw here.

/ our best photo the whole trip /

after picking up tickets in the theatre district, we head down to reuben's parents' hotel (in possibly the coldest part of all manhattan) to join them for happy hour and wait for gina and gerald, the two family friends who would join us on our adventures from australia. when they arrived, we decided to go up to central park for a carriage ride. it was incredibly frosty, but it was a great experience, even though our horse farted through the first 10 minutes of the ride.

/ our driver, his companion stuffed penguin and our horse /