~/nyc

Well, it’s been a *long* day! We arrived a little too early at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, so we headed down the street, to see the New York Stock Exchange (Wall Street), and took photos - including some of the guards (police? I’m not sure) outside, armed to the teeth! Then we made our way to the hole where the “Twin Towers” had stood, for yet more photos.

We got back to the Fed in plenty time for our tour, which was only ok - but the vaults of bullion were fairly impressive! The security around the whole place is unbelievable! They don’t hold private accounts - only with other banks - and it doesn’t cost anything to store gold there. It has the largest stock of free gold in the world, 98% of which belongs to foreign central banks, most of which was deposited just after WWII. The transaction charge (to move gold into, out of, or between vaults) is 1.75USD/bar, and has been since 1924.

After the tour, we headed down to the South Street Seaport Museum, and wandered around for a bit. It was getting seriously warm, when we headed back uptown. Colm thought he knew where the theatre was, so we spent fifteen minutes walking uptown until he finally looked at the tickets (for the address), and another fifteen walking back - by then, a queue was forming, and we waited for the doors to open.

The show was fantastic - go see it! The accents were ridiculous, the humour definitely not something that would translate to Germany! One of the main characters was Leopold Bloom, but no one else seemed to get it when he asked “When will there ever be a ‘Bloomsday’?” =) Oh well…

After a stop off at the NYPL again, this time to see inside (it’s beautiful), we’re back in the hotel, feet up, taking it easy for a bit. We’re getting through our itinerary at a good rate, so hopefully we’ll have a chance to sleep in tomorrow morning =) Yay!