The Last Days of New York City...WHEW!

You know how they say, "It's a great place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there..."? Well, that epitomizes how we felt about NYC. On our last full day there, we had tickets to go on a Ferry to Ellis and Liberty Islands. Our plan was to drive!...... DON'T DRIVE IN NYC!!! if you can keep from it. It sounded good to all of us, it was hot, we were tired of the subways, and we wanted to go across the Hudson River to get to Liberty Park. There were several geocaches in the park we wanted to hit before our scheduled ferry trip. Well, we started off all right. Our little Garmin car GPS was very helpful and said we would be at the park in less than 20 minutes. We knew that once we got into the tall skyscrapers our satellite reception would be a little hit or miss, so we did map directions on my iPhone to back up the Garmin... things were moving along splendidly... until I got pulled over by a policewoman... Even though I was turning right in about one block, I was in the wrong lane. Supposedly there was a sign that said that the lane I was in was for buses only during certain times of the day. Though the traffic was bumper-to-bumper, and there were tons of vehicles that were not buses in the lane I was in, she still took my license. I apologized and explained that we were just trying to figure out when and where to turn and try not to get our new mini-van from getting smashed... she said, "Don't they have signs in Indiana?" uh... well, yes... but not 3,000 per city block, and not ones that have fine print! Anyway, 15 minutes later she gave me my license back with just a verbal warning. Whew!

We continued on through the maze... Come to find out, there was a toll to get across the river... $6! and on the other side there was another $0.60 toll. If we had known it was going to cost us that much upon entering the last street before the tunnel, we would have told the GPS to avoid tolls, because we found out the following day that there was another route we could have taken that was free... though it would have taken a little longer... We finally arrived at the Liberty Park. We had plenty of time to go do a cache, but not as much as we had hoped, which was all right by us because the temperature was getting out of control at 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Everyone was starting to get grumpy, so we got a few hot dogs and sat in the AC area where we picked up our ferry tickets. We then decided to get in line. After going through security, we were told that the Ferry was about to leave! It was 10 minutes before our tickets said it was going to leave!!! So we ran to the end of the pier to get on... did I mention that the temperature was over 100?! We did make it, but we were all miserable when we sat down on the top level, in the direct sunlight... I guess I shouldn't complain too much, everything up until this day had been going so well during our trip. So, the trip to Ellis was very nice. Once the boat started moving, there was a slight breeze that helped with the heat. Ellis was pretty cool, though a bit boring. I did get to take a few pictures of some names, on the "Wall of Honor"... which was a list of every immigrant that came through Ellis Island, that share my last name. I'll have to do some research to see if I'm related. Our trip to Liberty Island was again very nice. The entire family loved the Statue of Liberty. We got some great pictures and despite the heat, we had a great time.

We did have many people ask about the t-shirts!

Just before the ferry ride to Ellis and Liberty Islands
(NYC skyline in the background)

The station for the ferry and used to have trains come into also

We've arrived!

Signing into Ellis Island

Ellis Island

Ethan was pulled from the audience to help!

The Great Hall of Ellis Island

With the last name Everett!

Onto Liberty Island with the Statue of Liberty



In all her glory!

That's one big foot (a replica of Lady Liberty's)

The torch that was replaced in the 1980's

Looking up inside of the Statue of Liberty

  

Goodbye Lady Liberty...back to Jersey
(and hopefully some AC!)


After the wonderful trip to the two islands we ran right back into some bad luck... traffic!!! New York City traffic!!! It took us 60 minutes just to get back to paying the toll again. I laughed, a little too snarkily I'll admit, that I was paying to wait in traffic, to which she replied, "That's rush hour for you..." ... it was 8:00 PM!!! Rush 'hour' in NYC begins at 3:00 and lasts until 10:00, the last I checked, that's 7 hours, not 1!!! Anyway after another hour the traffic was starting to lighten up, but then Ruth realized that we had to be close to Times Square, and we hadn't seen it yet... so I made a detour to drive through it... an hour and a 1/2 later we finally made it back to the hotel. We were exhausted, but looking back, it was worth it!

Times Square

That night was our last night in NYC, but since we had money still on our Metro subway card, we decided that as soon as we checked out of the hotel, we would use them to go to Chinatown and Little Italy... which we did. We enjoyed it, but our enthusiasm was dampened by the excrutiating heat. After having a nice lunch we picked up our minivan and wished New York adieu... or so we thought... We decided to try and get out of NYC by using the "free" route. Two hours later we found out that there was an emergency two blocks before we entered the bridge and had to take a detour. It was as if the city was trying to suck us into it's quagmire-like streets. But we managed to pull free into New Jersey... again...

Goodbye New York...