New York in sun and snow - February 2011 SOL & ESB

[Bartswife]

Monday 21st February 2011

Having seen the forecast that 4-6" of snow was due overnight I was a little concerned about our pre booked Statue of Liberty visit. I so desperately wanted to get a photo with a bright blue sky instead of a dismal grey one! But we carried on regardless and caught the Gray Line express bus straight down to Battery Park, we had a lovely tour guide who seemed very interested in where we came from in England, was asking all sorts of questions about the UK, even ended up talking about Gretna Green and people being married over the anvil! He talked a little bit about the financial district and told us where to visit to see into the building site at World Trade Center, he told us about the mooring where Titantic should have berthed. 35 minute journey down to Battery Park and Glen sat on the exposed top deck all the way there, the Australian woman behind us said 'he's mad' - quite agree!









Just look at the roads, 4-6" we would have ground to a halt, there its clear!

Arrived at Battery Park and headed straight for security clearance which was done quickly and efficiently.



Plenty of people to board the boats but soon underway. Despite calls for people to not stand on the seats as soon as SOL came into view people (including myself) stood on the seats. I'm a firm believer in doing what's asked of me but I wanted to see the view and get a photo as well and was stuck at the back of some very tall people.



Views from the island. Walked around the base and had a snowball fight before warming up with a hot chocolate in the cafe.













Cleared security again the go inside the base.



After lots of picture taking we moved onto Ellis Island.







Kids were determined not to let us enjoy this place for long, we were only there couple of hours and some of that was having lunch in the cafe and a 3/4 hour long film about the history of the immigrants.
Caught the ferry back to Battery Park with a hint of blue sky appearing but very windy and cold on deck.

[Bartswife]

Starting walking towards Wall Street area and passed The Bull with some silly character sticking his head up its backside - how original found the Stock Exchange and then headed over to the World Trade Center site and called in the progress museum, someone tried to sell us a booklet with the tragic day shown in photos. Felt very uncomfortable being there, visiting a place that holds so many awful images in your head seemed macabre but I wanted to kind of pay my respects. We had also called in St Pauls chapel but they were closing down for the day so it was a really quick look around.



Caught the downtown loop of the hop on bus passing Southstreet seaport area that was planned for another day and went back to the hotel for a rest. John and Ash went in while Glen and I searched for a sandwich shop, now you may think this is easy peasy, Ashley being on the autistic spectrum has to have things a certain way and a ham sandwich is a piece of meat in 2 slices of bread (white preferably). Try finding that in New York, first choose the bread, then the filling then the sides - OMG, even Subway wasn't right. Ended up a little supermarket type place that made up rolls, the kind server let me see the roll and meat first and made up a plain one for us. Took a huge Subway back for John and Glen to share and an enormous bag of Lays crisps, I had a health bowl of fruit. We wanted to do the evening bus tour, went to the meeting point to be told to head off to the alternative meeting point - don't know why but by the time we got there there were only odd seats left apart from 4 on the top deck. We sat in them to be told by an English woman that someone was sitting there! John said, well they should be here then and a bit of an altercation was developing. As we would have been on that bus for 2 hours (you can't get off) I didn't want to sit in an atmosphere like that so made my lot get off. I was angry and upset, I could see her point of saving family seats I'm sure we've all done it but she was very unpleasant to us. We called back in the hotel to pick up Empire State Building tickets to visit there instead.

















Took a tired stroll home bypassing Bryant Park and some skaters.







Fell into bed by 10.20.

[Guest]

Fantastic pictures. You must have been freezing on the boat with the wind coming off the water.

[Guest]

some great pics there . . .shame about the experience with that woman on the bus! How long did you spend doing the SOL/Ellis? Its another thing we have planned on our trip too

[disney owl]

brill photos again thanks for sharing

[Guest]

Fantastic photos. Thanks for sharing your trippie.

[lettie]

Really enjoying your trip reports- takes me back to last year when we were there.

[Bartswife]

Originally Posted by karen_uk

some great pics there . . .shame about the experience with that woman on the bus! How long did you spend doing the SOL/Ellis? Its another thing we have planned on our trip too

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I didn't take particular notice but we caught the boat to SOL about 10am and left Ellis Island about 3pm ish! Sorry to be so vague.

[orlandosgr8]

Another great day, we really enjoyed the bus tour

[DIBBadmin]

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