Turns out 50 blocks is a long way...

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I had booked the Statue of Liberty tour for today although I wasn't sure that any of us would be up in time to get there. I woke up and definitely still felt drunk and I don't think that I was the only one who felt that way! Somehow we were all able to get up and we took the subway down to the financial district and walked down to Battery Park from there which was where the boat would leave to take us to Liberty Island. Along the way Jake wanted to stop for a drink at 7/11 but Jack would no allow him to do so! It was a short ferry ride over to the island and the view of Manhattan was spectacular. I had booked tickets that would allow us to go to the crown of the statue which were limited to a few hundred per day, thankfully I had booked this in advance as if we had waited until the day we would not have been able to go up there as the tickets were all sold out until February.



The staircase was the tightest spiral staircase that I had ever been on and even I was nearly too small to pass through in some areas and it was a long way to the top. Once we got there it was definitely worth the price as the views of New York were amazing and would recommend anyone visiting the Statue of Liberty to head up to the Crown. At the top there was an absolutely hilarious guy who was making everyone laugh with his stories and jokes. After the long climb my legs started to cramp up on the way down and I was really struggling to keep going and had to hobble down the last few steps. We were not allowed to take any bags up to the top and so had to store them in a locked which was secured by a thumb print. Annoyingly our one did not recognise Jack's fingerprint and we had to get someone from the till to get it open for us.



One the way back we made a quick stop over onto Ellis island where all the inbound immigrants were process but no-one really felt like taking the museum tour. On the way back to the ferry there was a great moment when someone kicked off at Harv because he had pushed into the line, not that Harv cared in the slightest moment with this guys opinion! As we were very close to the financial district we decided to check out Wall Street which had some very impressive buildings on it and Alex got really excited by a giant statue of a bull. Annoyingly I can't remember the name of the place that we stopped off for pizza around that area as it was excellent. I thought that it would be a good idea to walk back to the hotel as I did not think that it would take that long to get there, by the time we got to 20th street and over an hour had passed I realised that I got this completely wrong. Overall it took nearly 2 hours to get back to our hotel on 45th street and my feet were absolutely killing me by this time and all of us headed back to our room to rest.



After a couple of hours rest we headed back out to go and eat at a Korean restaurant called Hanjan that I had researched by watching a youtube video called day of gluttony. Along the way we discovered an excellent outdoor food market which we would check out at some point later on in the week. The Korean restaurant was full when we arrived but they said it was going to be a 30 minute wait for a table so we went next door into a pub called the Flatiron which had a giant bierhaus downstairs, I later saw this featured on Impractical Jokers! The food in Hanjan was certainly worth the wait and the price (my meal came to $60) as it was delicious. I had the Kobe beef ribs which were by far the best ribs that I had ever eaten and probably the best meal I had eaten all holiday. The beer that came with the meal was also excellent and complimented the food perfectly. It was also hilarious watching everyone try to eat their food with chopsticks; I was particularly bad at this. Anyone coming to New York I would definitely recommend that you come here if you are looking for something a little different to eat and that does not include a steak or burger.



The original plan after the meal was to go ice skating outside the Rockefeller center but when we got there there was no openings for another couple of hours so instead we decided to go to the top of the Rock instead. The view of New York was brilliant and it was great to get an aerial view of New York at night with the Empire State building being very nicely lit up with various colours. No-one really had the energy to go anywhere after the Rockefeller center as it had been a very long day and we had walked a very long way. I think it may have been the most miles clocked up on foot for the entire holiday beating even the walk to Harvard all the way back in Boston.

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