road warrior's » New York, NY

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Ease onto a park bench and gaze up at the open sky, and you’ll understand why Battery Park City is often called the sixth borough of Manhattan. The concrete jungle may lie mere blocks inland, yet it seems worlds away, the bleating horns and hissing crosstown buses blessedly muffled. Stroll the verdant tip of Battery Park for a startling reminder that Manhattan is, in fact, an island, and continue your journey to the historic harbors further north. With its soothing mile-long Esplanade and lush lawns backed by upscale condominiums, Battery Park City is a compelling reminder of lower Manhattan’s resilience after the September 11 attacks. Once blanketed in thick ash and smoke, today the sun-speckled, well-tended waterfront fills with joggers, Rollerbladers, and families with strollers. As you stroll the Esplanade, you can gaze across the Hudson River to the New Jersey skyline, and as you continue on to South Cove, you’ll catch sight, as did more than 100 million immigrants upon their arrival, of Lady Liberty herself. Near Battery Park, you’ll see Pier A, all that remains of the 1886 grand marine firehouse, where important visitors who arrived by sea were greeted with festive jets of water pumped into the sky by fireboats. The clock on the Pier tower once kept time to the maritime system – eight bells and all’s well. Within Battery Park, just past Castle Clinton monument, you can relax on benches in the cool shade of tall trees, while at the water’s edge, look for the American Merchant Mariners Memorial, a haunting, wave-lapped sculpture of soldiers pulling a desperate comrade out of the waters, based on photographs of a World War II attack on an American ship.

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