Day 4 - BEAUTIFUL weather for a boat ride!

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

We wanted to get an early start, so we were up at 7 am and down to breakfast by 8 am. When we were done, we headed to the southeast corner of Central Park to catch that Uptown tour we had missed the day before. The bus arrived shortly and we got seats up top – and we also got a WONDERFUL tour guide! He was born and raised in NYC, and he and his wife & kids live in the same neighborhood he grew up in – East Harlem. He was funny and very knowledgeable – we were entertained and we learned a LOT! New York City has so many different faces to it!

Best tourguide in NYC

On the tour bus

We rode that tour back to Central Park South, then transferred to a Downtown tour bus, thinking that would get us to Battery Park in time for our 1:30pm reservation to go to Liberty Island and Ellis Island. It turned out to be the SLOWEST bus in the history of busses! We got to Battery Park at 1:28 – it took an hour and a half! We RAN to the wrong ferry (the Staten Island one), then turned right and ran all the way through Battery Park to get to the boarding area for the Statue of Liberty… only to find a queue with hundreds of people waiting! And it was HOT! Fortunately, I had pre-reserved, pre-paid tickets, so we got to skip a bunch of the line. This was the line for the FIRST security checkpoint! Then we queued up to board the ferry, which was packed. Fortunately, it was a short ride, and even more fortunately, they sell drinks and snacks on the ferry. It was a HOT day and a cold drink was wonderful!

Kids on Ferry

The Statue of Liberty
What can I say about this that is any more descriptive than ‘awesome’? As part of my pre-paid tickets, I got audio tours for me and the kids – turned out to be a GREAT way to get the kids to focus on what we were there for. We all learned a great deal about the statue, the builders, the history, and all the important players that made this work of art a reality.

Then we got a SPECIAL treat! Again, as part of my pre-reserved package, we got to enter the monument museum in the pedestal. Most visitors are not allowed to enter – you can only get in, in fact, if you pre-booked a reserved ticket with monument access at least one week in advance. I was lucky to even get tickets! Most of the times were booked when I made our reservations!

We entered the tent area to discover another security checkpoint. The kids loved this one! We did the bomb sniffing booth, where it blew puffs of air all over us. It tickled!

Once clear, we were free to enter the museum. They recently had to replace the statue’s torch, but the original sat right there in the rotunda of the entrance to the museum. (PS – did you know that the 11 point star shaped based of the pedestal was actually a military fort which was active until the 1930s? When the fort was closed, the island was officially turned over to the National Park Service).

The original torch - it was replaced in 1986

We went up a couple of flights of steps and turned a corner to find a to-scale reproduction of Lady Liberty’s face! It was cast using the same molds and techniques that the original builders used, so it is identical! It was very cool!

We walked through a long section that showed how they built the statue, and the interior support structure. It also detailed the fundraising efforts that took place to raise enough money to build the pedestal. Though the statue was a gift from France, we had to provide the pedestal, and the Congress didn’t authorize any funds to pay for it!

We then came to the section that allowed us to climb to the base of the statue – this is no easy feat!! We had already climbed about 4 flights of stairs, and we had ahead of us another 248 stairs! I’m fat, out of shape, and old, so I had to stop halfway and catch my breath. But I MADE IT!!! I was seriously dying when I got to the top, but I made it! And it was awesome!

We got THIS close!

We got to see up into the body of the statue – they don’t let visitors ascend into the statue anymore – not that I would have gone! It was another several hundred stairs! EEK!

The views were phenomenal. The weather was warm, but there was a breeze off the water that felt like silk! After enjoying the view in all directions (and recovering from the climb!) we descended, we did a little shopping, then went to hop on the ferry for Ellis Island.

Ellis Island Registry Room

We didn’t have a lot of time there, unfortunately. We had an audio tour there too, so the kids and I learned a lot. The first floor is the baggage room, where all the baggage was to be left. The second floor was dominated by the registry room. All immigrants had to pass through this room the long way. They were each asked a series of questions, and based on their answers and upon a doctor's observation of the person as he stood in line, they were 'categorized' as clear to land, or as 'detained for further examination'. It was eery but very cool to walk through the same rooms and down the same steps that my great grandparents walked when they immigrated to the US in 1903. How excited, yet how terrified they must have been! Our audio tour taught us a lot about what immigrants faced – it was all new and terrifying. The staircase at the back of the Registry room was a poignant site – it is known as the stairs of separation, with 3 divided sections. They categorized you in the registry room, then sent you down this staircase, depending on whether they felt detention was needed or not. You did NOT want to be sent down the middle staircase, because that meant detention for medical or other reasons.

We didn’t have time to check the records to find my great grandparents, but we DID discover that we can do this at home. Ellisisland.org is the website to go to if you want to locate the records of your ancestors, provided they passed through Ellis Island from 1890 through about 1924. One interesting fact we learned: if you were a first or second class passenger immigrating to the US, you didn’t have to pass through Ellis Island – that was reserved for 3rd class and steerage passengers only. First and second class passengers were screened on board the ship and disembarked directly into NYC.

We caught the last ferry off the island and back to Battery Park. There, we found the eternal flame and memorial to the victims of 9-11 and we took a moment to pay our respects. It was a little distracting to have foreign tourists running around chattering and positioning themselves for lovely smiling pictures with the memorial. Actually, it was more than distracting - it was a little bit offensive.

The tour bus we were hoping to catch was LONG gone, and we were NOT about to walk 57 blocks, so we decided to catch the subway. We walked up a couple of blocks to Rector St, where we planned to catch the 1 train of the NYC subway. But first, we needed to check out Trinity Church, which was right there at Rector Street. If you saw the first National Treasure movie, you know about Trinity Church. Michael wanted to go in to see if the graves in the wall are there, but it was closed. Darn! But the outside is spectular, and the cemetery in the grounds is very old and cool.

Trinity church cemetery

We found the gravesites of Alexander Hamilton and Robert Fulton, as well as some graves of Revolutionary War soldiers, and we paid our respects.

The 1 Train station was a block away and it was a very easy, very clean, and very pleasant way to travel the 42 blocks back up to Times Square.

Meri wanted to eat at Times Square. Otherwise, we could have stayed on the 1 train all the way to the station ½ block from our hotel. We ate at TGI Fridays – again, not an original choice, but it was Meri’s turn to choose! MAN, was it an expensive place! Only a handful of entreés under $20! Michael was a bit put out that I wouldn’t let him order from the adult menu, but he was also feeling unwell – he had a headache. It was probably due to a combination of the heat, the exercise, the long day, and the need to eat. We had a great waiter who was very good at his job and kept us refilled on drinks and stocked up on everything we needed without seeming to be intrusive. He was GOOD. And I guess he liked us, because he didn’t charge us for our drinks or Michael’s side Caesar salad, saving us $15. It wasn’t an accident – I tried to point out the error, but he silenced me with raised eyebrows and a “can I get you anything else?” And of COURSE I tipped him well! You know I did!

We walked back to our hotel, and I can’t even begin to describe how GOOD it felt to take off my shoes! By the way, I’ve been wearing a great pair of New Balance shoes that are keeping my feet happy and healthy as we walk the miles and miles (and even more miles!) of street. The 800 Mg Advil that my surgeon prescribed after my surgery last month is coming in handy for all the other aches and pains that come with being out of shape but on your feet and moving for 10 hours a day. BOY, those pills have had a lot of good uses! Maybe this was the ‘purpose’ of getting my gall bladder out… the Lord knew I would need the pain pills for other things! LOL! I used them when I threw out my back 2 weeks ago, then again last week when I had an emergency root canal. Yep. I am a true believer in the mantra that things happen as they are supposed to happen. We just don’t always know or understand the ultimate purpose, but there IS one. Look for it.