Empire State Building

The 102-storey skyscraper in New York. It remained the tallest skyscraper in the world for a record of 41 years, & was surpassed by the North Tower of the World Trade Center in 1972.





The building actually has its own zip code !!! & approximately 20,000 employees work in the building every day ........




The 86th floor observation deck offers a 360-degree views of the city, it's so dense looking down to the surrounding. The amazing thing is that it took us less than a minute to get up there smoothly.




The Statue of Liberty can be seen here, it was far out there, below my blog URL, you may be able to see it in the next picture with the zoom.




Hope you can see it, the tiny bit in the middle of the picture below :




& this is the lobby's entrance that features the building with an aluminum relief :


The building was featured in movies like King Kong, Independence Day, Sleepless in Seattle etc. This is definitely a must-visit building if you are going to New York :)

Ground Zero

These are the new towers built to replace the destroyed Twin Towers., but they are not as tall. They were brand new when we visited in 2003.





We could also see the towers from the coast.




I was in California on Sept 11, 2001. I was still in bed at 7.xx am when the disaster happened. I heard the bad news on the radio when driving to work, it was a horrible feeling reaching office where everyone was shocked & sad.






That night, the TV was overwhelmed with this news, the video clip of the plane crashing onto the building was played over & over again on CNN, I felt so depressed & had to switch off the TV.






I never seen the Twin Towers in person. I went to work in the States in Jan 26th 2000, but I didn't take the chance to pay them a visit cos I thought they would be there anytime I feel like going to New York.





Sometimes we take advantage of things that we thought would be there for us forever ... I learn the lesson & now I try to do things that I like & can afford whenever possible instead of keep delaying the plan. Do you have any similar story to share with me ?