Ok, The big apple day 2.

We started the day again with a delicious bagel and cawfee, and caught the subway down to battery park to catch the Staten Island ferry. The most striking thing about battery park is the big gold sphere from the World Trade Centre plaza which was salvaged from the rubble and moved there. It is quite battered and scratched up as you can imagine, but is largely in tact and stands in front of an eternal flame as a memorial to those who lost their lives on that fateful September day.

We caught the free ferry not because we wanted to visit Staten Island, but because the ferry sails straight past the big lady herself, the Statue of Liberty. There is no point these days in spending the $10 to visit the island, since you can't get inside her anyway (that sounds a bit rude!) anyway. The general consensus around the city is that she is too valuable and would be too symbolic of a target for terrorists for people to ever be allowed to make the climb up.

You get a grand view from the ferry anyway, and let me tell you, she is BIG! I mean really big, her nose is something like 1.5 meters long and she stands at about 93m..

After we got off of the ferry, we strolled around the financial district a bit, grabbed another cawfee, and wandered down Wall street. The strange thing about NYC is that even though we had never been there, the place was strangely familiar. I guess all those episodes of Seinfield, Sex in the City, Friends and countless Scorcese films give you a good idea what the place looks like.

Anyway, from wall street we walked over to ground zero. Let me tell you, no matter how many times you have seen it on TV, nothing prepares you for how big that hole is. They are currently rebuilding number 7 World trade centre, which fell down from consequential damage at 5 pm on 11/9/2001. No one outside of NY has really heard of it, yet it is 34 storeys, 3 storeys bigger than Adelaide's tallest building.

As you can imagine, it is an amazingly sad and moving place. There is two people that stand out the front, and they are just reading their way through a description of the life and times of each victim aloud. I don't know how long they have been at it, but they seemed to be about half way through when we were there. Meanwhile there are other people there that will hand you photo albums showing what the place used to look like while you are standing there. Sure puts a lump in your throat.

Serious part of the day over, it was time to catch the subway over to the Ed Sullivan theatre to catch the Letterman show. The subway ride in itself was exciting, because as we were changing trains, we saw some real life break dancers doin' thair thang in the station. They were amazing, and they had one serious beat box. I wasn't as moved by the experience as I might have been as a 10 year old when I was watching "Beat Street" over and over, but still very cool.

We made it to the Ed Sullivan, got our tickets and then had about an hour to kill before the show started. We had a bit of lunch, but I wasted most of it in the CBS shop, picking out which bit of cool "Survivor" merchandise to buy.

Once we were inside the theatre, the first thing you notice is how cold it is in there. Because of all the lights, the stage is obviously very hot. Ol' Dave is a superstar though, and needs to be cool so the result is that the audience area is like a fridge. As for the show, it was bloody amazing. A little more slick a production than XFM live and exposed. Dave is of course very funny, and the guests he had on were Ray Romano (of Everybody Loves Raymond fame) and that talentless Canadian, Avril Lavigne.

Once we were done with Dave, it was off to the US open. We managed to get some tickets to the quarter final and were hoping to see Lleyton Hewitt play. Unfortunately, they don't actually schedule the games until the last minute (depends on TV ratings) so we missed Lleyton's game, but got to watch his future brother in law, Johachim Johannson beat local boy Andy Roddick in 5 sets. It was a great night out, Arthur Ashe is one big tennis stadium, with good views from almost every seat.

The security there though was insane. You weren't allowed in there with an opaque bag of any type whatsoever. You had to pay $5 to check your bag and be given a clear plastic bag to tote your belongings with, which was searched before you went in anyway. I felt sorry for the people at the check in desk, because they were coping a fair bit of abuse from the notoriously impatient New York natives about having to take their $5.