My wife and I and our youngest daughter (then about 18) went into the WTC lobby exactly a week before it came down. We were meeting our elder daughter who was at Uni in Oregon at the time. Decided not to go up on cost grounds - now wished we had of course. Saw lots of the office workers going up and down the lobby escalators - some of whom presumably only had a few days to live.
Was in San Francisco, just north of the Golden Gate bridge, a week later. That morning we were woken up by someone starting a big truck outside our motel window, which was left running, it seemed for ages. Put on the TV and saw the pictures. Then understood why the truck seemed to have been abandoned. All a bit unreal. Was able to cross the bridge to our pre-booked downtown hotel - myriads of people trying to get a room, to no avail. At the time they were anticipating closing the bridge as they didn't know if there were more hijacked planes in the air.
Wandered into town. The city was deserted - litter blowing in the streets around the TransAmerica building - just like one of those post-apocalyptic films. Did the sights we planned to but it was all very surreal. Not helped by the fact that we rang home to let MiL (who was dog-sitting for us) know that we were OK, but no one answered. Turned out that our dog had died on 9/11 and she'd gone back to her home.
Eventually was able to fly back to NY a week later, once flights had resumed. Flew over the WTC site, still plume of smoke arising high into the sky.
That was a very strange trip. We have photo of daughter #2 in front of WTC, a week before 9/11.
