Saturday morning we left the apartment early to eat breakfast and get to our timed entrance to the One World Center Observatory – I think on the 100th floor. Oh my. I am actually not a fan of heights, but that was so high that it didn’t even seem real. And oh, the views! Just breathtaking.
From there we went to the 9/11 Tribute Center, and the tour we went on guided by a firefighter who was there that day, and a crane operator who worked during the recovery process. Wow – what a tribute it was. It was still very emotional for them, so as you can imagine, very much so for those of us listening to them. The Memorial itself is just very moving. There were two squares that followed the footprints of both of the buildings, black marble, with all the names of the victims carved into them. The water running down the sides ran in rivulets, rather than a sheet of water, to represent all the individual lives, then ran together into the hole in the middle. You couldn’t see the bottom of the hole. Just very, very moving.
The Survivors’ Stairs. In both buildings, there was only this one stairwell that didn’t collapse, and the people that happened to find it are the ones that were able to get down to safety. Just very, very moving.