Saturday, July 2, 2011

Today we originally had no reservations anywhere so it was our rescheduled Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island trip. We got going early because we had no ferry reservations and we heard they got crazy busy. Mark talked to the lady and got our previous reservation signed off and then we got into thereserved ticket line because it was shorter. One lady tried to stop us because our tickets weren’t for that day, but nobody answered when she called for clarification on what to do and the line was backing up so they just waived us through. As they should, because after all we’d already been inconvenienced once! The ferry was fun and once we go to Liberty Island we picked up our audio tour. This one was well worth it, it talked all about the history of the Statue and what it means and it’s evolution over the years. I must admit, previously I’d kind of thought of it as a tacky tourist thing but now I have a new appreciation. As an aside, about 12 years ago Mark and I had gotten the reservations to climb the Statue, and that I do believe is a waste of time and money.  It takes a while to go through the climb, it’s uncomfortable and claustrophobic and at the end anticlimactic because you just get a view from the tiny windows in her crown. Touring the island with the audio tour was much more rewarding.

We looked for smashed pennies on the island but there weren’t any (!) so we boarded the next ferry for Ellis Island. We arrived right at lunch time so we had an okay enough lunch in their cafeteria before touring the facility. The kids liked it although of course there is a lot of detail there for them to absorb. Hopefully some of it made an impression. They did say it was a far far nicer place than Angel Island, for the poor people who immigrated through there instead. For fun we did a register search of my great great great grandfather. I did come up with a Franz Jarnot. I know my brother and uncle are way into this and if I’d paid more attention I’d already know if that was right or not, but it was fun for the kids to look. So we printed out that ledger page, and took the ferry back to Battery Park.

We walked around Battery Park for a bit and then went to get near the Charging Bull near Wall Street, as we had somehow missed it when we were in the area on Wednesday. We had to pretty much push our way in to get pictures, but we did! Then we went to what the map said was the closest subway stop because Mark didn’t like Hopstop’s routing. Well, in this case Hopstop was right, it tracks subway closures and our subway was closed so we had to walk and walk and walk to the closest open station. Genevieve did get to see this strip on the pavement dedicated to her, though. One advantage of this new subway routing was we did get to arrive at Grand Central Station so we finally got to see that. There was also a very cool store there, Pylones, where we got some unique gifts. By now it was getting late and we were getting tired so we decided to do the easy thing and get pizza at Little Italy Pizza again. Charlotte was happy. When we got back to the hotel, Genevieve and I went across the street to a tourist shop because I was enamored of this Metrocard tshirt. It was way too small, even in the largest size, so I exchanged it for one that has a New York subway map on the front. Still cute. By now the boutique at the bottom of our hotel was totally gone. Genevieve was amazed that it all happened so quickly!

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