Statue of Liberty

My husband and I took off a few days of work and left the kids with Grandma and Grandpa to go to New York City.  With just two days in New York, we packed in everything that we could.  If you followed us on Twitter or Facebook you got a taste for everything we did – it was non stop and we still didn’t see everything this trip, we could’ve used another couple of days.
We walked to Times Square and had breakfast at Junior’s Cheesecake.
To start off, they set these little scrumptous morsels in front of use, they were melt in your mouth good.  They were a warm, flaky pastry with honey and almonds on top.  Just YUMMMY!
We didn’t eat the Cheesecake for breakfast, but we split a really good Bacon & Swiss Cheese Omelet and the Homemade Cheese Blintzes- Strawberry Sauce & Sour Cream – they were Fabulous!!! Just look at all of the stuff inside the Blintzes!! (FYI – we ate the cheesecake later on the trip, if you want a really good dessert go to Serendipity – trust me Serendipity will spoil you on all desserts.)
Thankfully we had a lot of walking to do and we were well fueled.  We had breakfast around 9:30 and didn’t eat again until our 6pm reservations at Serendipity.
Our next stop was to take the Ferry to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. We walked and gawked through Times Square to catch the 1 line (subway) down to South Ferry to tour the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.  
(And in the subway is where I dubbed myself the grinning idiot tourist from Alabama- I saw a rat among the tracks and grabbed Ben and pointed excitedly “Look a rat, Look, Look!” and I fumbled to try and get my camera…too late – I kid you not, it looked just like the rat in “Ratatouille” :) )
We had to do the touristy thing and get people to take our pictures; it was neat being a tourist in my own Country.  I often think about going to other countries to tour and forget there is so much to do in ours. We were surrounded by people from England, Australia, Germany, etc…it’s humbling to remember that we are truly in one of the greatest nations and everyone wants a taste of it.
It was around 40 degrees and drizzly most of the day so the pictures didn’t come out as vibrant as I would’ve liked, but I was grinning from ear to ear the whole time, gawking at the old buildings and remembering scenes from “National Treasure”.
FYI – when you get to the place, “Castle Clinton” to buy the Ferry tickets, you can also buy a City Pass Book.  For $79 you pre-buy a ticket for Guggenheim or Top of the Rock, Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, Empire State Building, Museum of Modern Art, and Museum of Natural History – which is super handy cause you don’t have to stand in long lines :)
There was so much that I missed about the Statue of Liberty when I was in school, and even the trip I went on in 1999 was completely wasted on me.  Did you know:
  • the Statue was shipped in over 300 copper pieces with the assembly instructions in French:)
  • there is a skeletal structure inside of the Statue of Liberty similar to the Eiffel tower (Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi enlisted the help of Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel)
  • the flame is the second one because the US messed with the original design by making the statue into a lighthouse by adding windows to the flame.  The new flame is what Bartholdi had intended.
  • Bartholdi modeled the statue after his Mom’s head and his girlfriends body (that’s a weird thought).
Note: take the free guided tour with the Ranger who stands in front of the flag pole – he was fantastic!
We didn’t get to go up in the statue because they are renovating the base.  They anticipate in a year they’ll be able to have people visit but not like they did back when I visited in 1992/1999 (not sure which trip).  Back then you had to stand in line for 2 hours, climb a ton of steps, get to the top and take in the view for like 5 seconds cause the person behind you is shoving you along.  Instead, in about a years time, they are going to allow timed visits of no more than 250 people a day so you can actually enjoy the site.  
Our next stop was Ellis Island.  The gateway for immigrants between 1892 and 1924 where nearly 12 million immigrants came through.
That was interesting,  but be prepared to read a TON or get the audio tour headsets.
I took the picture of the Seagull because they were all over the place and very bold!  One of them swooped down and sat on a lady’s tray of Nachos and took some! :)
While we were at the museum we sat down in their library to run a search to see if our ancestors came through Ellis Island – Ben called his mom and I called mine, both of our people came over before Ellis Island existed.  But, did you know that you can go to http://www.ellisisland.org/ and find the log your ancestor signed? That would be worth framing!
The skyline is infused with the new and the old. The Watson House built in 1800 was right across the street from the South Ferry and wedged between 3 skyscrapers.
We did all of the above between 9:30am and 1:30pm…stay tuned to finish the day at the 911 Memorial, China Town, Serendipity and the Empire State Building – whew! :)   That was just day 1. :)   
Here are some more pics from the first day.

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