tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1750120863647373520.post1634511588058346141..comments2023-08-08T11:48:10.725+01:00Comments on swisslet: the sadness will never go....swisslethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16708248700851998044noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1750120863647373520.post-35657592913037024412011-03-28T20:36:04.542+01:002011-03-28T20:36:04.542+01:00I'm not sure if I'd recommend having a loo...I'm not sure if I'd recommend having a look or not, Dave, to be honest. On the one hand, it's nice to see the new building going up, and it's also good to be reminded (and choked up) by what happened and some of the heroism that ordinary people showed. On the other hand, the grief porn tourism is still hard to take. We didn't hang around and worked our way on up Wall Street in time to see the Exchange closing (Frozen Concentrated Orange Juice! The Crop Report! Clarence Beeks!) and to have a drink and some delicious pigs in a blanket at Ulysses just around the corner. It was also good to get a perspective for the first time of just where the towers stood in relation to everything else. I had no idea before as I'd not seen the towers in situ.<br /><br />Agree with you totally that it's the little things you see all over the city that are the best tributes. I think I've said it before, but the empty plot which had been decorated with commemorative tiles made by school children in the Village somewhere was very moving.<br /><br />Have a great time - it's an amazing city.swisslethttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16708248700851998044noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1750120863647373520.post-35456654432194653672011-03-28T13:44:14.386+01:002011-03-28T13:44:14.386+01:00We went to NYC, the Easter of 2002, when the wound...We went to NYC, the Easter of 2002, when the wounds were fresher still, and like you, we made a conscious decision not to go to Ground Zero.<br /><br />It felt odd and distateful to see American tourists (still as obvious in the USA as anywhere else in the world) wearing Ground Zero T-Shirts, and for them to be seen blatantly worn round the city where it happened. How would it feel to see people wearing a T-shirt with the distinctive number plate of Fred West's house (the scene of another mass murder), walking round Gloucester? I wondered.<br /><br />What I didn't know I needed to see, until I did, were the two beams of light shining up to the clouds from where the twin towers stood, viewed from the Staten Island ferry. And the NYC Fire Dept Easter Bonnets in the Easter parade. Far more subdued tributes and as a result, all that more powerful and moving.<br /><br />We're going back to New York at the end of May. It will be interesting to see what difference nine years makes.Dave Serjeanthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06479441346697423799noreply@blogger.com