How the Pilgrims and early immigrants must have felt as they trundled up against land here in Halifax or in other North eastern cities! Or I guess there weren’t cities yet were there? Anyhow. It was about 7:30 am when I went up for coffee and I saw "bright!" and then I stepped outside and saw "Green!!!!! grass and a light house!" The past few days on the north sea have been mother nature at her gloomy worst. Well I guess Mother Nature can be worse. She did not pour a storm on us. Yesterday at noon, I insisted on going swimming and kept looking up and begging for just a hint of sunshine to warm the conservatory or solarium whatever you would call it. Nope. She was just grumpy. So it has been cool and quite cloudy. One day and it is sunny. We will eat a little snack of breakfast and go ashore with friends from Scotland who go around sleeveless! Margaret swims with me! We will tour Halifax and beaches, islands and lighthouses together. Then another day at sea and back into the USA! Yesterday we listened to a talk on the building of the World Trade Center… a story of bravado, gumption, vision and grief. When the Empire State Building was erected midtown Manhattan was the center of commerce and the south seaport was almost a slum of little electronics shops… The rich men of vision planned to build A World Trade Center!!! and they planned on taking a large piece of land and exercising emminant domaine (sp) (they enlisted the NY and NJ Port Authority).. and the argument went all the way to the State supreme court who said, "OK build the building" and then the store keepers took it to the US Supreme Court who said it was not a Federal matter. So the shop owners were thrown off. Their property was purchased for about $3000 each.. yikes. That was mean. What was important for the builders was to build over a dirty grubby commuter rail terminal and they were right at the sea port. Actually when the towers went down there were many telephone and communications connections and several rail lines lost. To get Mayor John Lindsay’s approval to reroute streets the planners determined to use the refuse from destruction to build Battery Park City. And so the world Trade Center two towers went up in 1973. 50,000 people worked there and 200,000 people visited there every day. We looked longingly at pictures of Windows on the World where many of us dined at some time (the engagement scent from Sleepless in Seattle looked out on the Empire State Building from there) and Cellars in the Sky and the Greatest Bar on Earth… all gone now. The speaker showed the picture of the 2 lights shining up into the sky and then we moved on. The new one building opened November 2014 and that too will become an icon. I have to go, but first we saw the funniest interview with our on board commedian and a magic show… we are busy busy!!!!! I hope we get to swim this afternoon after Halifax. It might help me to continue to get into my pants! Have a wonderful day! God bless you.
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