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Published: November 5th 2010
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Squirrel!!!!
They are everywhere DAY 33
Up nice and early this morning at 6am to make sure we got to Battery Park in time for our statue of liberty tour. We had brekky at the same deli as the previous day, although this time I had oatmeal and Scott had grilled cheese which was very cheesy!! We grabbed another Starbucks on the way and we were in time to grab the seasonal flavours - peppermint mocha and gingerbread. We walked past Good Morning America studios in Times Square, but there really wasn’t much to see. Couldn’t see what was actually shown on TV and couldn’t see them in the studio, think they use a few different ones. So after a few minutes we gave up and hailed a taxi to take us down to Battery Park. Once there, we went into Castle Clinton to pick up our tickets which I’d booked online about 5 months ago - they were with access to the crown. As we were pretty early there were no queues. We had about an hour to kill, so we walked up to Wall Street to see the Stock Exchange and the famous gold bull. The buildings are fairly impressive downtown here and
they just surround you on every corner.
We walked back down to Battery Park and jumped in line for the ferry to Liberty Island. We had to pass through security like the airport, but just didn’t have to take our shoes off. Got through pretty quickly and boarded the ferry at about 9.30am. We hopped on top of the boat and had some nice views of New York and the Statue of Liberty as we approached it. It was certainly cold up on the deck, but I’d worn an extra jumper today to try and keep warm.
Once we hopped off the boat we followed the signs for crown ticket holders as we needed to get a special pass. We found the info centre and found out that they only give out 340 tickets to the crown per day and they are booked out until Jan 2011 - so pretty lucky that I’d booked so early. We stored our stuff in a locker and made our way into the Statue of Liberty. We joined the 10.15am tour and had to make our way up about 350 stairs that got thinner and thinner the higher you got up. But it was
worth the climb. Once we got up into the crown, there is only room for about 8 people to stand, but you can see out over the water and New York. We took some photos, including some of us inside the crown - holding the camera out looking in. We then walked back down to the pedestal access, which is the observation deck at the bottom of the statue. We got some good views again over the water and of New York and then headed back down to the ground floor where we started our audio tour and looked at the Museum. We learnt that the statue was built in France first before being shipped over to the US as a gift. USA had to build the pedestal on which it stands so it was in storage for a year before being re-assembled. We left the inside of the statue of liberty and had a walk around Liberty Island to get some more photos. Once we were done we grabbed our stuff out of the locker and headed back to the ferry to go to Ellis Island.
There isn’t much to see on Ellis Island, just an immigration museum; we
Battery Park
This sculpture was located at the world trade centre, they recovered it from the wreckage and erected it as they found it as a tribute didn’t spend much time there as we had so much to do for the rest of day. We just learnt that the museum was the processing centre for all of the immigrants that came to the USA and where they needed to register. It meant that the statue of liberty was the first thing many new immigrants saw when arriving in the states. It also explains why New York is such a multicultural place with a lot of different cultures.
We hopped back on the ferry to get us back to Battery Park at around 1.15pm. We started to walk up to the WTC site and museum. They have the site blocked off as they are re-building a new world trade centre and memorial there. It will look really magnificent when it’s finished. Looking at the space that those towers filled it is just so hard to imagine them both falling to the ground. The museum was very moving and had a lot of stories from people who survived the attack. They had displays of teddy bears and fireman’s badges/hats, laptop bags and signs that had survived the collapse. It was definitely very moving and hard to believe that it
was 9 years ago. Once we finished at the museum we walked around the site and some of the overpasses and got to see all the construction going on.
Next stop was walking along the Brooklyn Bridge. It is a pretty huge bridge and the walkway is in the middle of the bridge above where the cars drive. We got to see some nice views of Brooklyn and New York. Once we’d finished walking the bridge and back we headed to the East Village to go to the Doughnut Plant, which we’d seen on a food show back home. We walked about ½ hour to get there and were surprised with how small the actual shop was. However, this didn’t take away from how yummy the doughnuts were! I got a peanut butter and jelly square donut and Scott got a Triple Chocolate Fudge one. Yummy!!!! Worth the walk. We started to walk up to 6th Avenue from here and got to walk through Chinatown, Little Italy, Lower East Side, Bowery, Soho and Greenwich Village. It is quite funny as one moment you are surrounded by Chinatown and you can’t read any of the writing and they are selling fish
and crabs from their shopfront on the sidewalk and the next moment you are in little Italy where they are selling pizza and gelati’s. It is very bizarre but cool!
We then decided that we may as well walk to Washington Square as we’d wanted to go, and seeing as we were so close may as well. We passed some cool bars and shops in Soho/West Village and even saw a Vegetarian Restaurant which looked really nice, but was too early for dinner. Got to Washington Square and it was a small little park that had lots of squirrels and musicians busking and old guys challenging people to chess games! From here, we caught a taxi on 6th Avenue up to Madison Square Gardens as we had tickets to the NBA game - however we were in for a shock...the game had been postponed!! We were spewing as this was the last chance we had to really see a sports game over here. At this stage we weren’t sure why, but thought we’d go back to the hotel to find out what theatre American Idiot was showing at so we could try and catch it tonight rather than waste a
night. As we were walking up I spotted the theatre down West 44th street and caught a promoter on the sidewalk with discount tickets. So we headed down to the theatre and picked up half price tickets in the orchestra section at the front about 12 rows back.
We walked down 8th Avenue a little bit to find somewhere for dinner as we were now rushed for time a little. We found an Italian place that had Eggplant Parmagiana so we stopped there. It wasn’t the cheapest being so close to Broadway but it was nice. Once we finished dinner we headed back to the theatre around 6.45pm, got a drink and grabbed our seats. The show was really good actually, probably better than I expected. It went for about 90minutes and time just flew. After the show we headed back to the hotel as we were tired again from another long day of walking around
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Mum
non-member comment
Picture postcARDS
Your photos are just like the postcards. Ground zero is very eerie. Squirrels are very cute. You also look very cold. Guess we see you next at Niagara Falls. Luv ya Mum