What a beautiful day we had. It was sunny and warm enough for a light sweatshirt. We took a train into Penn Station and than headed down to Battery Park for a nice walk down by the water. While there we visited Castle Clinton National Monument and learned about the development of lower Manhatten. Castle Clinton had many uses before becoming part of the park. It was initially a fort on a small island off of lower Manhattan built in xxxx. It's initial purpose was to protect the city from the British during War of 1812. After the war it was converted into xxxxxx. It also spent time as an aquarium and an immigration center before becoming part of the park. By this time the area had been completely filled in changing the landscape of lower Manhatten. The original fort was rediscovered during a routine archeological dig prior to the renovation of the South Street station?.
After our walk we took a subway to the Lower East Side and visited the Tenement Museum. The museum is an old abandoned tenement building that converted in 198x. Inside each apartment as been restored to a different time period in the buildings history using real historical residents a guide. The apartments are then "occupied" by actors portraying the individual residents. Each character has been thoroughly researched using family members oral history and public records to create an extremely accurate portrayal of their character. The museum can only be visited by several different small group tours which cost approx xxxx. Each tour visits one particular apartment where the group can interact with the "resident" asking questions about daily life and viewing artifacts from that particular time period. If you're interesting in visiting I suggest booking at least a couple of days in advance to ensure you get the particular content and time that you're looking for. It's a little pricy given but if you're interested in the daily life of the working class and newly emigrated it's a must see.
After the Tenement museum we took a short walk to Little Italy where we sat down for an early dinner at Grotta Azzurra located on the corner of Broome and Mulberry. We chose this particular restaurant because in addition to the two course meal for $16.95 they also agreed to make a smaller portioned meal for Mikey. I had pasta with garlic and oil for my first course and chicken parmigiana for my second. My sangria was absolutely delicious- not super sweet with nice pieces of fruit. The first course was perfectly cooked al dente that my grandfather Mario would have approved of with oil and giant chunks of roasted garlic. The chicken parm was more eh.... but it was cheap and filling. Mikey had an amazing fettuchini alfredo that was again perfectly cooked pasta with a thick and creamy, buttery, alfredo sauce. We then headed over to Ferrera's italian bakery which is always a treat! I got a couple pignoli cookies that were just like mom used to make and Mikey got a tiramisu cup to go.
Our next stop was the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. Mondays online you can get free tickets for Tuesday evenings so we took advantage of the opportunity and got tickets for 6pm. This only left us with a short period of time but it was enough to get through most of the museum which is a definite must see.
