The Big Apple

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Interesting trip from Lancaster, Pennsylvania to New York, NY. Since Lancaster county has the highest density of Amish in the US (some 33,000), we visited an Amish experience centre to learn more about this closed religious group that moved to the US from Swizerland/Germany to escape persecution. The simple Amish way of life is much in evidence, with farmers tending the fields using antiquated machinery, and people riding around in their characteristic horse & buggies wearing 18th century-style dress. Amish only choose whether to be baptised or not ('Amish or English'😉 after the age of about 18; the vast majority choose to remain within the religious community which espouses a strict interpretation of the bible and a very simple lifestyle.

But they make great quilts - we were late getting to NY because Pat couldn't be dragged out of the gift shops, so we got caught in the Friday evening rush hour!

Today the weather was fine & sunny and we took the (free) ferry from Staten Island to Lower Manhatten Island, then bought tickets for the ferry over to Liberty Island and Ellis Island. All that was painless enough but we didn't factor in the ~3-hour wait to actually get onto the ferry. At the airport-like security check, Pat was again caught trying to smuggle a Swiss Army knife in her backpack. This time the guard allowed her to hide the knife in the bushes outside the terminal (in Washington, we were forced to leave the Smithsonian Museum and bury it in the flower bed)!

Nevertheless, we enjoyed visiting the Statue of Liberty, even though you now have to book months in advance to be able to climb up inside the statue to the crown. As we already knew from our trip to Paris, the structure of the Statue was designed by Monsieur Eiffel, of Eiffel tower fame.

After that, we walked up to see the memorial at the site of the Twin Towers and the re-building of the World Trade Center. Then a walk through the streets of sky-scrapers, along Broadway and Wall Street - Federal Reserve, US Stock Exchange, etc. Plenty of police but no protesters in sight.

Heading NE towards Boston tomorrow...

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