{UAH} MY THIRD DAY IN NEWYORK WAS A BUS TOUR

MY THIRD DAY IN NEWYORK WAS A BUS TOUR. 

By Abbey Kibirige Semuwemba, UK.

On my third day in New York, we went on the famous pre-booked bus tour. My sister and her husband jumped off the coach at the last minute, as the latter wasn't feeling well.

New York is loud. Noise is everywhere - the traffic, beeping horns, the subway trains, sirens, loud people. It takes a while to adapt. The city is also surrounded by water. Actually, water welcomes you as you enter it from New Jersey. 

We saw a lot of places as the tour started at 10:00 a.m and ended at 17:30. There is the central park, Union Square, Washington Square, Little Stuyvesant Park, Madison Square, and Trump building. The list is long, and they are wonderful places to stop and rest and be entertained. 

And of course, the UN headquarters -- Uganda owns two buildings in the area that were constructed by Idi Amin. Yes, the Uganda embassy and Uganda House are unbelievably located in one of the most prestigious locations in the city.

What's not to like in NYC? You can spend a whole day walking and eating and being entertained for free in the city.

Our last stop was at the World Trade Centre. We stopped here for lunch -- so I went into a Korean restaurant to see if i would like the food. I ordered a curry, but i didn't like it at all - the rice looked and tasted horrible. It was a total waste of money!

My visceral gut reaction on 9/11 after the towers fell was that the Americans would rebuild the same World Trade Centre (WTC) towers again, but they didn't.  Instead, they decided to build a 9/11 memorial(reflecting pools), museum, and park on the old spots and a new attractive tower on the side.

The memorials look like two big holes or water retention ponds with the new tower shoved off to the side. Just like at the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, names of the dead are written on the pond walls.

There's something designed like a bird outside to reflect the planes that hit the previous towers, I guess. I took a photo in front of it because I found it interesting. 

The new WTC tower( Freedom tower) is actually about 48 feet taller than the previous WTC tower, at the top of the radio towers. It is exactly 1776' tall to mark the country's founding year. 

Apparently, the previous WTC was controversial even when originally built. Many New Yorkers hated those towers because they stuck out too high above the skyline and looked ugly. The building was built in 1973 when Amin was president of Uganda but was fully occupied by 1975.

In terms of making a statement, America lost an opportunity by not building back the Twin Towers to the exact pre-attack specifications. By not building it back up, it is the backers of the terrorists who get to forever say "Yeah, we did that!"

The WTC tragedy took part about a year and a half after the NATO campaign over Yugoslavia, during which one of the targets that was successfully destroyed was the TV tower on the mountain near Belgrade The tower was built in the early 60s and has since been a visual symbol of the city, visible from many parts of the city, as well as from roads approaching it. Its destruction wasn't really strategically meaningful, since most people had already switched to cable TV by then, but it had a massive emotional effect, permanently altering the city skyline, leaving huge void, visually and emotionally (much like destruction of WTC did to the NYC). In the following decade, an initiative was launched with a major fundraising campaign to build an identical new one (even though it wasn't really needed much anymore). It was completed in less than 10 years, restoring the city skyline.

I have more to tell, but it may take a whole day. So, just invite me for food somewhere such that we joke about New York - you will be paying.  Wasalam!

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