New York Trip: Part II

Original Day Two Plans:
- Wake up after sleeping in a little for breakfast and to check out of the hotel
- head over to New York again for ice skating in Central Park, tour Time Square, stop off at Ground Zero and whatever else came to mind.

Revised Day Two Plans:
- Ground Zero
- Ellis Island and Statue of Liberty

Actual Events:
So, we woke up the next morning unsure of what we was going to happen. Ryan had a rough night and I wasn't about to push it on him. He seemed to be doing alright, so we check out of the hotel and decided to grab a light breakfast. He still seemed to be doing alright and so we went on with our plans - slightly altered.

View from our hotel window... the city skyline

We decided to skip Ground Zero and so there was no real reason to go back into the city. Instead, we decided to take the ferry to Ellis Island from New Jersey. This saved us a bus ride into the city and having to figure out transportation to the bottom of the island. All in all, it worked out great.

Since our plans were slightly altered, I was checking up on ferry times from Jersey on our way there. We were about 10 minutes away and the next ferry left in roughly 15 minutes! We really tried to make it, as the next ferry wouldn't leave for another hour or so, but as we were running up to the security check with tickets in hand, they told us the ferry was pulling out.

The ticket area for Liberty State Park was in this awesome old train station. The area where trains at one point would have pulled into was very "Life After People"

an old train...

ahhh... so we are in the right spot...

I really thought the train station was cool... so with some of our free time...

Here's the boys in line for tickets... at this point we weren't aware we'd missed the ferry

The Statue of Liberty ... from the ferry.

from Ellis Island...

I think "cruises" is a bit extreme..

With our extra time, I went back to the car to feed and change Jude and we walked around Liberty State park. The time passed by pretty quickly and before we knew it, it was time to board the ferry. Time passing quickly became a theme for the day. Because we were at the mercy of the ferries, we had to keep an eye on the clock.

Jude was a trooper the whole trip...

The statue of Liberty didn't let people in past a certain time, so in order to get to Liberty Island (from Ellis Island) in a timely fashion, we needed to get off the ferry and get back on the next ferry. This left us (I believe) roughly an hour and a half on Ellis Island. Of course, we didn't get through all of the exhibits... but there's always next time. What we did see was all very interesting and really displayed nicely. I had never been and so walking through all the different rooms - which once served as examination rooms, luggage rooms and much more was all very... interesting... amazing... etc.

As with present day airports, etc, passengers coming in had to exchange currency...

samples of the graffiti walls...

Katy is checking to see if Jude and Ryan may enter...

I LOVE LOVE LOVE this wall... it was a bunch of faces from one angle and a flag for another.

My girl...

The luggage room had a bunch of trunks and stuff... it was probably one fo the coolest rooms. These folk sure didn't travel light...

Like I said after Ellis Island was Liberty Island. We had a little more flexibility on Liberty Island and so upon arriving we grabbed a snack in their cafe. I am under the impression they're doing some heavy renovations and so the place was kind of a mess.

Next we headed for the Statue itself. Did I mention that you needed to go through security JUST to get on the ferry? Like airport security (minus taking off your shoes)? Well, you did. Not only that, but you needed to go through another mini security to go into the base of the statue. No bags were allowed, so I was thankful that I had just changed Jude's diaper before stowing our bag away in a locker. Also, I made the assumption that one could just go on up to the crown. Well, you can't. You need special timed passes and you need these passes MONTHS (yes, the security guard said MONTHS) in advance. He even said that at this point getting summer passes might be getting slim. CRAZY! But either way, we continued the tour.

For anyone who hasn't been, you enter through the back of the base of the statue. You go into a room which hold the original torch and then follow some steps up to the museum portion. Everywhere you went said that it's basically a one way tour. Once you pass a certain point, there's pretty much no turning back. The museum itself was pretty interesting. There were live-size replicas of certain parts of the statue, lots of pictures, facts, etc. Then you have to climb up a number of steps to get up to where her feet are (that's as far as you can go w/out the timed passes). inside was pretty cool, because you could see "up her skirt' into all the inner workings of the statue. The structural support, etc.

Yes... and the elevator was broken.

Life-size replica of her big toe.

The original torch.

The highest spot you could get to was not exactly the most desirable. There's a pretty poor view of the statue... and really... that's what we were there for.

As we were climbing down, we realized that we were minutes away from the departure of the next ferry. Even though Ryan had toughed it out through the day, he was ready to go. We made sure to get the pictures we wanted and finish everything we had been there to do and then raced back to the ferry. We made it just in time!

It was then back to the car, back to Delaware and back home. We had a busy two days and two busy days of work ahead of us. It's Tuesday already and I'm still trying to play catch up.