I have been to several famous memorial sites in my life, and I am sad to say I can't even remember which ones. For me, visiting a memorial is an interesting experience but it doesn't make the event feel any more "real" in my mind. The one site I have visited that did have an impact on me was the 9/11 site and the empty space that was left by the attack on the World Trade Center. I didn't visit the official memorial. The site alone made the event seem so much more real than anything else could have.
I had never been to New York City before, and the experience was extremely overwhelming. The tall buildings, the streets crammed with taxis, and the realization the NYC really is the city that never sleeps; this all was so different from what I had grown up knowing. I was in town visiting colleges the summer before my senior year with my best friend and her mom. My friend's mother had grown up in New York and much family lives there so it was obviously a very moving experience for both of them.
The thing that made this experience so memorable was the how in the midst of this bustling city there was this vast emptyness where the WTC had once stood. It was very surreal. But at the same time it made the event so much more real to me than any other event that has been memorialized. There were many people there who were visting this memorial and there was a calm and quiet atmosphere among these people. Because this site is in the middle of the city there were also many people there who passed by this place everyday on their way to work, home, etc. so they passed by it while talking on their cell phones or reading a newspaper and didn't even give it a sideways glance.
