This morning we took the subway down to the site of the Trade Centers. I didn't take pictures, and I don't feel like writing about it, except to say that I felt like I shouldn't be there. Afterward, we walked around Wall Street and saw the New York Stock Exchange. The original area is much smaller than I expected. I kept looking for Michael Douglas carrying that gigantic mobile phone he had in that movie, but all we saw was a boatload of fancy suits and some group that was protesting the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Chinatown. Extremely crowded and full of narrow little stores that are about a doorway wide and extend ten or fifteen feet back. I haven't seen so many cops clustered in a single area since I've been here. The shops feature great shoes and pretty silk scarves. Young guys wandering around offer merchandise that is a little more questionable (Rolex watches, etc). Nick is pretty sure he was offered crack.

Soho is only blocks away, but it might as well be a thousand miles. That's the thing about Manhattan—you can cross the street and it's like you're in a different city altogether. We swung by the Jack Spade store, where Nick bought a dead-sexy bag for his laptop. We also visited the nearby Apple store. With its translucent stairs and chrome accents, the store mirrored the design scheme of its products. It was like walking around inside a Mac. About half the stores in Soho are trendy, one-of-a-kind boutiques; the other half are franchise projects like Eddie Bauer and J. Crew. The whole place has a funky, free-thinking feel to it. Here's a poster I saw:

Soho displays may be a bit schizophrenic—Prada purses are featured between ping-pong paddles and first editions of Lolita—but somehow the whole thing works.

Subways. I love the subway. There is a lot of condensation on the ceilings, and so it's not uncommon to see little stalactites hanging from the beams above your head. There are also some great mosaics on the walls, most of which are appropriate for each particular stop. For instance, the Natural History Museum stop features a long hallway depicting a veritable ark of animals and insects. It's cool. And then you step onto the train. Riding the subway is like being on that boat in Willy Wonka. The car races along under the earth like an out-of-control roller coaster. You look out the windows and see only blackness, occasional flashes of graffiti, and the faint glow from the train's headlight. Is it raining, is it snowing—is a hurricane a-blowing?

I saw:

1. Battery Park
2. the Brooklyn Bridge
3. about a billion ads for that freaking "Day After Tomorrow movie
4. the Statue of Liberty (sort of—through layers of fog)
5. a sculpture that was in the lobby of one of the Trade Center buildings. It's now a memorial site, and there is a flame burning at the base
6. a lady who I thought was totally crazy until I saw that she was using one of those earpiece cellphone thingies
7. taxis, taxis everywhere