New York City: From the United Nations to the Statue of Liberty

Our next stop was New York City. We took the subway from the airport into Manhattan, then headed straight for the United Nations—we were going to be late!

Why not take a cab? Because under the rather extreme traffic conditions around Manhattan, the subway was much faster for us.

The moment we emerged from the station, Manhattan’s towers filled our entire field of view.

Then we entered United Nations Headquarters. It stands beside the East River on Manhattan’s east side, and institutions that constantly appear in international news—the General Assembly and Security Council among them—meet here. They had always seemed somewhat distant on television; this time, it felt as though we had walked directly into the setting of the news. We had booked a Chinese-language guided tour, so at last we could make sense of what was where.

We saw several of its famous meeting halls.

We then went to the top of the Empire State Building. Completed in 1931, the Art Deco skyscraper dominated the New York skyline for decades before still taller buildings began to appear. Even when we visited, it remained one of Manhattan’s most recognizable structures.

At last we could look down over Manhattan instead of feeling hemmed in by its skyscrapers.

To be honest, the express access we had bought was completely useless: there was no line at all when we arrived. But we were in a hurry, so we had purchased everything in advance anyway.

The next day, we visited the 9/11 Memorial at the former World Trade Center site. The footprints of the Twin Towers, which collapsed in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, had been transformed into a memorial area, with a reflecting pool occupying each tower’s former location.

In the most bluntly literal description possible, there were now two enormous pools. The names of the victims were inscribed on the bronze parapets surrounding them.

Next came the New York Stock Exchange, followed by the famous Charging Bull nearby in Lower Manhattan. The NYSE stands in the Wall Street area and is one of the world’s best-known stock exchanges. Yet the neighborhood’s classic tourist photo stop is still that famous bronze bull. Whether Wall Street itself was bullish was anyone’s guess; the bull, at least, showed up every day.

Then came the day’s main event: the Statue of Liberty, the ultimate American icon. A gift from France to the United States in the nineteenth century, the statue was dedicated in 1886. Over time, it became one of the defining symbols of both New York and the country—something almost everyone has seen, even if they have never visited the United States.

Honestly, I suspect some of the statue’s fame among my generation owes a little to the well-known game Command & Conquer: Red Alert. Plenty of young gamers probably first learned that America had a Statue of Liberty by blowing it up in the game.

The boat ride in both directions also gave us a view of the Manhattan skyline from the water.

We then arrived at Times Square, which seemed to be what happened when New York turned the crowds, tall buildings, and advertising all the way up at once. Enormous screens lit nearly the entire neighborhood, especially after dark.

It was packed. We had heard at the time that certain Times Square advertising slots, when purchased for only a very short run, were not as outrageously expensive as one might imagine. That apparently explained some of the wonderfully random things that occasionally appeared there.

On our third day, we visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Met’s collections span much of the world and thousands of years of history, from ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome to European painting and Asian art. It was far too large to examine seriously in a single day. With our breakneck approach to sightseeing, we could only pick a few things to see. Still, there seemed to be treasures of every imaginable kind.

After some more eating and wandering around New York, our visit came to an end.