I will never forget my trip to NYC just 10 days after the events of 9/11/01. It had been planned for several months... a girls trip after graduating from college and finishing my summer internship. The day we flew to NYC was the FIRST day planes started flying again, and at that point flights were still refundable if you chose not to fly. My friend Yooli and I boarded the plane and it was maybe 1/4 of the way full. And I admit, I was checking out the other passengers carefully. After an uneventful and quiet flight, we landed in NYC. It was weird to see a gaping hole in the middle of the City Sky Line with a big plume of dust still lingering in the air. NYC was practically a ghost town. Times Square, which is normally jam packed with people, was relatively quiet. We were able to walk right into shows that normally you have to wait for hours in line for, (David Letterman, The Producers w/Matthew Brodderick, a Yankees game when they were just about to clinch the division title... just to name a few). We ate dinner at the Rainbow Room as a spur of the moment splurge, and we were told that normally you have to make reservations MONTHS in advance. We got to see (from a distance) ground zero. At the end of every day, our finger nails were filled with dirt from the debris that was in the air. We bought flag pins from street vendors, a lot NYC touristy paraphernalia, and donated our spare change in all the Red Cross buckets around town to help show our support. I will never forget the site of ground zero, or the American flags that were flying on every street corner, or witnessing a city (that was normally so lively) become so solemn. Thank you to those who serve our country and are fighting against the war on terrorism.
I will never forget my trip to NYC just 10 days after the events of 9/11/01. It had been planned for several months... a girls trip after graduating from college and finishing my summer internship. The day we flew to NYC was the FIRST day planes started flying again, and at that point flights were still refundable if you chose not to fly. My friend Yooli and I boarded the plane and it was maybe 1/4 of the way full. And I admit, I was checking out the other passengers carefully. After an uneventful and quiet flight, we landed in NYC. It was weird to see a gaping hole in the middle of the City Sky Line with a big plume of dust still lingering in the air. NYC was practically a ghost town. Times Square, which is normally jam packed with people, was relatively quiet. We were able to walk right into shows that normally you have to wait for hours in line for, (David Letterman, The Producers w/Matthew Brodderick, a Yankees game when they were just about to clinch the division title... just to name a few). We ate dinner at the Rainbow Room as a spur of the moment splurge, and we were told that normally you have to make reservations MONTHS in advance. We got to see (from a distance) ground zero. At the end of every day, our finger nails were filled with dirt from the debris that was in the air. We bought flag pins from street vendors, a lot NYC touristy paraphernalia, and donated our spare change in all the Red Cross buckets around town to help show our support. I will never forget the site of ground zero, or the American flags that were flying on every street corner, or witnessing a city (that was normally so lively) become so solemn. Thank you to those who serve our country and are fighting against the war on terrorism.
2 comments:
Wow, that is amazing that you were able to go so soon afterwards. I bet it made it all even more real. I took a trip with my best friend a few years before 9/11 and I remember going up in the Twin Towers and just seeing how unbelievably TALL they were..it's still amazing to think they are gone...along with all those people. I know our generation will never forget it..and I can only hope that the next will too. Thanks for the great post!
Thanks for sharing. This is one of the events in our lives that we will always remember what we were doing when you found out about the attack.
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