New York

---

---

I woke up very early in the morning (5.30am) to visit the Statue of Liberty. We left just after 6am and it was still dark outside. The subway was dead because it was a Sunday Morning and the service was really slow.
We got off at the Staten Island ferry service stop and headed towards the statue. The subway took around an hour and so it was light outside by the time we got out. There was a heavy low-lying fog which made Battery Park look slightly eerie.
We queued up for tickets and fortunately got tickets to visit the monument and museum - a privilege for only the first 500 people to visit for the day. We had tried to visit the statue previously but were not quick enough.

We boarded the ferry and left for Liberty Island. We couldn't see the statue at all due to the low visibility but as we approached the island, the statue became a little more visible. Far more impressive was the view of Manhattan behind us, as the skyscrapers towered above the fog, making it look like a city in the clouds - even the water was not visible for the fog. There was a light rain also, which did not cause too much bother because it was so light.
We left the ferry onto Liberty Island, the first thing we did was visit the Information Centre and Gift Shop. Whilst browsing the gift shop we overheard the staff saying the ferry service had been temporarily suspended as the visibility had become lower and the fog worsening. We felt it was time to visit the monument itself.
There was a lot of security to visit the statue, having to go through airport-style security twice and extra scans for chemicals etc. When we finally did make it into the statue I was surprised by the size of the pedestal - The pedestal is almost the same size as the statue!
We entered into the pedestal and saw the torch of the statue of liberty - we were told that the torch was actually the original and it had to be taken down as it may have fallen, so they built a replica and maintained the original inside.
There was also a museum inside and many mini replica statues. It was interesting to learn about how the french had built the statue.
We climbed the stairs to the top of the pedestal and I was amazed at the view of Manhattan. It looked once again like a city in the clouds with Jersey City, Manhattan, Brooklyn Bridge and Brooklyn all now visible. We spent a while up the pedestal and around the statue taking photographs before leaving on the ferry to Ellis Island.

Ellis Island used to be the site where immigrants would go to see if they were eligible for US citizenship in the 19th and early 20th Century. The huge building on the island had been turned into a museum and tourist attraction. The island was covered in tourists like myself. The museum was slightly depressing and it didn't feel good to be visiting that place, the people looked sad in all the pictures and it wasn't a pleasant place to be.
Next we decided to go back to Manhattan and eat in an Italian near Central Park.
It was considerably cheaper than I had expected - around the same price as it would have been in California and much more expensive than in a city like London.
We ate a really nice meal and I had Italian style sausage and onion dish with a side of freshly cooked French fries. It was really nice to sit down and relax after such a long morning.
We left the restaurant at around 1.30pm and headed towards the Metropolitan Art Museum, which was recommended to us by one of Carlotta’s friends who lives in New York City.
The outside of the Met museum was very impressive at was packed with tourists. People were sitting on the steps leading up to the temple-like museum. We waited in a long line of tourists to get into the museum. I was very pleased to see that the entry was only $10 – the cheapest entry to an attraction so far.
We began by approaching an Egyptian exhibition, there were rocks with hieroglyphics and calligraphy on the walls, mummies, sarcophagi, and even had shipped over parts of a pyramid and reassembled it into the museum.

The museum was very impressive and very large. The next exhibit was an American lifestyle exhibit - one of the main displays was someone’s house in Minneasota which was dismantled and re-assmebled carefully inside the museum. Aside from that there were a lot more displays and many more exhibitions including modern art – Andy Warhol and Pablo Picasso, Chinese and Japanese culture – including Kubla Khan and the Yuan Dynasty, Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece, European Art including Van Gogh and Monet, and many other points of interest. We spent a total of 4 hours in the museum and even then we hadn’t visited everything or paid attention to most things in the museum. I felt it was the best Museum I had visited and was certainly better value than the Guggenheim we visited the day before.
It was getting late so we walked towards the biggest Macy’s department store in the US and ate there for dinner. We got great service and it was nice to sit down after a long day, of visiting places and walking around, and eat a turkey burger.
It was 8pm and we all decided to head home and go to bed to get up early once again for the next day’s travel.

---