Day 5:
It was an earlyish start to get from our hotel on 57th Street right down to Battery Park.
Onto the subway once we finally found an entrance and then walked for ages to get to the station. We spent most of our time on this line:
Cue numerous hummings of the song Downtown. Coming back wasn't much better with Uptown Girl.
Eventually we reached the bottom end of Manhattan and we could finally see what we aiming for.
We had already prebooked our tickets for both the ferry and with the monument pass so we could go up into the pedestal of the statue. So we caught our rather busy ferry.
Our ferry went from Battery Park to both the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Everyone sat down and then as we started moving off everyone got to their feet so it was hard to take photos without someone's head appearing in them inconsiderately. Though I did managed to get a good picture of the end of Manhattan.
We soon got to the island and we saw what we had come to see. I don't know why it just seemed smaller than you would imagine.
And this was our first run in with the awful tent. We had to queue for at least an hour in both the sun and then a really warm tent while everyone passed through security to get in.
After having random puffs of air fired at us for some reason and passing through security scanners we finally got in. For once we actually bought the audio guide which was very useful and made us actually look at things properly rather than just walking through the museum.
But it did cause awkward moments when you just seemed to turn into a statue, or when one of you was ahead of the other.
First stop was the old flame which they replaced after it was starting to leak.
Next up was a casting of Liberty's face which in my opinion looks rather ugly/odd but then I guess not many people were meant to see this up close.
Supposed inspiration for the statue, the Lighthouse of Alexandria:
Model for the face? Nothing like imitating your mother.
Anyone fancy an ear:
Now my friend promised that she didn't wear this t-shirt on purpose but I don't trust her really. Too much of a coincidence:
Finally we made it outside and it was a chance to take an arty shot:
Now the perils of going on holiday with just two of you. Unless you take a myspace style photo you can only really have one of you in a photo unless you get a randomer to take it of you.
Randomer attempt 1:
Second time lucky she actually got both of us in shot:
I have to admit it was really sunny so you couldn't see the display screen of the camera. Only downside with some digital cameras.
We could only go so far as the pedestal. Her crown only opened up on July 4th and it was still June when we went.
We got to look up her skirt though:
Our next stop was Ellis Island. Unfortunately I had pretty much killed my camera battery at Liberty Island and wanted to save it for the Empire State Building. So after a nice lunch we went back on the ferry to Manhattan and back on the subway.
I found the Empire State Building really freaky. I am not too good with heights and it just felt like it was constantly swaying which could have just been my imagination.
The usual "I'm a tourist" photo.
It wasn't such a bad day to go up and we weren't sure what the weather was going to be like over the next few days so decided it was best to just go up straight away.
The highlight of the day though was:
I have never laughed so much. I loved it and haven't been able to get the soundtrack out of my head ever since!
This was also the day of:
Our waitress told us and we didn't actually believe her until we were in Times Square and it was on the electric billboard. It was so weird as America just went mad. There was so much of his music on for the rest of the holiday. Everywhere you turned, even at breakfast.
That has been a rather long post so I'll leave the next day which was just shopping for another time.
