Grand Central Terminal was first built in 1871 and rebuilt in 1913. It’s a building with a some interesting historical anecdotes. For example, Cornelius Vanderbilt, the owner of the station, died the same day that the glass roof collapsed in a blizzard - and it wasn’t repaired till the new station was built in 1913.

Another interesting piece of history is that the station was such an important part of the war effort in World War II that the location of the sub-basement called “M42″ was kept - and still is - a closely guarded secret as it supplies power to the trains that go in and out of the station. In fact it was so important that Hitler sent two saboteurs in WWII to destroy it, luckily though, they were apprehended by the FBI before they could carry out their mission.

So with all this in mind we had to see the place! And today we took a walk down there after going down to Christie’s - again - this time to finalize the shipping details of the 500-year-old Renaissance drawing we had got at the auction.

Grand Central Terminal today - literally

Looking at Grand Central Terminal, it is easy to imagine that when built, it was the most prominent building in the area. And although now it has been dwarfed by many skyscrapers and serves less passengers than the 65 million who passed through in 1947, it is still a majestic -looking and very busy station handling over 100,000 passengers a day.

Statues and clock on the facade of Grand Central Terminal

There are so many good places to eat in New York, the problem for us, is that we’ve been so busy exploring the city that we haven’t had time to look for them. So today we decided to spend the day looking for something nice to eat. Since we like Italian food we went down to Little Italy, on the way we passed Greenwich Village, and a few other places we hadn’t been to yet.

Most of Little Italy looks more like China Town though, it seems the Italians have moved out and been replaced with Chinese. After looking around though, we did find a street that was lined with Italian restaurants and we tried the Lunella Ristorante.

The fried bread and mozzarella was ok, although without the tomato sauce it was a bit dry, the salad was great, the meatballs in the linguine were quite tender, the ravioli was ok, although not as juicy as some others we have had. All in all though it was a good lunch

Fried Mozzarella & bread appetizer

Pine nut and Gorgonzola cheese salad

 

Meat ravioli in cream sauce

 

Meat ball linguine

 

The SoHo district - a 30-40-min walk from Ground Zero - looks and smells different from the financial district. Skyscrapers are replaced by shorter old-fashioned buildings, and there are clothing and antique shops here and there. SoHo actually stands for “South of Houston”, and is well-known for being an arty-farty area. Struggling artists migrated to this area after they were priced out of the gradually commercialised Greenwich Village. As we strolled along Broome Street, we could see what drew artists to this area: Abandoned lofts and warehouse floors made good working space for artists (but doesn’t everyone like large living spaces?) Anyway, the rents at SoHo then skyrocketed and people who didn’t make enough to cover the rents had to move to other areas.

You know the actor Heath Ledger who died at the age of 28 from a drug overdose a few days ago? Famous for his role, among others, as a gay cowboy in the movie Brokeback Mountain. We chanced upon his rental apartment building at SoHo where he was found dead in his bed, and spent a few minutes at the foot of the building looking at the cards, flowers, candles left there by his fans. So much potential, so young, so rich, but yet lonely.

Makeshift Heath Ledger memorial in front of his apartment

Apparently his apartment was rented at US$24,000 per month. Yes, SoHo is now a place for the rich to live and is no longer for starving artists.

After our little Christie’s adventure and getting a 16th century work of art that was on auction, it was back to Wall Street - literally - for a look at how the markets ended after such a volatile week. Last time we went was a weekend and the only people there were tourists. Today it seemed the tourists had been replaced by police in bullet-proof vests carrying machine guns, and most of the street was blocked off to traffic and people.

Before 9/11, people could go inside the NYSE and actually have a view of the trading that was going on. Since then though, all the exchanges have extremely tight security and none are open to the public. So while it might be a necessary precaution, it does take out a bit of the fun of visiting these places. For a trader it’s sort of like getting to see the outside of a nice restaurant without being able to go in and taste the food

So while it was all well and good to be on Wall Street, we decided there wasn’t too much to see, and after Grace did her weekly video blog for GraceCheng.com we went off down the street following the light - yes, the street is in the shadows of the skyscrapers that tower above it - and before we knew it we were on the waterfront with a great view of Brooklyn and the Brooklyn Bridge.

Sea gulls, sailing ships, and bridges in New York

Which reminds me, we noticed that most of New York feels colder and doesn’t seem as sunny as the place we’re staying in Jersey City. So far our best bet is that most of the streets in New York are constantly kept in the shadows of its skyscrapers and that’s what keeps the temperature on the streets lower than where we are. The exception might be in the early morning when the sun is still high enough in the sky that the buildings don’t catch much of a shadow.