Give me Liberty... (again, very picture heavy)

After our lunch we took a nice walk around the tip of Manhattan. They have a lovely walkway along the river, to Battery Park. The main things Sariah wanted to do when she came to NY was to see Ground Zero, and to go to the Statue of Liberty. She is sad thast you can no longer go UP in the Statue. I'm glad I did that in my younger years...

As you walk along the tip of Manhattan, you begin to see Ellis Island, and the Statue of Liberty. People walk, jog, roller blade, ride bikes, etc along tis river area. It

was mid day when we were there and people were laying out enjoying the sun. There were guys fishing (I don't know exactly what fish they were catching)... they'd set out several poles in a line.

This was a neat memorial, I wish I'd gotten a better picture of it.

American Merchant Mariners' Memorial at Battery Park.

http://www.walkingoffthebigapple.com/2008/06/marisols-american-merchant-mariners.html Here's a blog link with info about it.

IKEA is even in NY!!! (This is for another post... but I think we should start a campaign to get IKEA here in the Huntsville AL area.)

On the boat to Liberty Island.

Last year in school Sariah had to memorize the Poem The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus -

The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Sariah had a little fun with her crown we'd already bought, and a torch she found in the gift shop.

Back on the boat - Saying goodbye to Lady Liberty!

After we got off the boat and walked around Battery Park, we found people doing characatures, so Sariah got one, it turned out really cute.

She paid for it. Of course they suck you in by saying it is only $5.00 and then try to force you to pay for a (cheap) frame for another $15.00, making it a total of $20.00 and if you don't take the frame your picture will get ruined! I didn't have that much left on me (after buying t-shirts and sweat shirts for the girls) so I said No, and he said how much do you have??? I think between Sariah and I both we ended up with $11.00. Then we saw several people taking pic's with someone dressed up in a Statue outfit. When they finished as the person started to move on, I said could we get a picture, adn the people from before us, said they'd take the picture so we could both be in it. they actually took about 5 pic's for us on our camera. We thanksed everyone, and the statue person said, that will be $5.00. I had no Idea! I told her there was no sign or anything and she should post a sign with a price on it if that was what she expected. I suppose that it made sense (she had a little box I noticed to put the money in on the ground tucked next to her stuff, with a license on it, -authorizing her to sell her wares (pic's with her in costume) there in Battery Park. I just didn't realize BEFORE we had already committed! Sariah and I both dug through all our stuff and scraped together $5.00. I don't know what we would have done if we hadn't been able to come up with it. Show her we were deleteing the pic's off our camera??? Who knows!?!

NYC (WAAAYYYYY TOO MANY PICTURES!!!!! but we did a lot, and took a ton of pic's!

How could I possibly choose only a few?

This time I am going to get to the NYC pictures!!!! I took a lot of pic's while I was away for two weeks! you've only seen a very SMALL portion of them!

When we were driving north out of the city to head to the Farm, Sariah got a glimpse of the George Washington Bridge, and really wanted to go over "The Big Bridge"! I told her we'd go over it on our way back to the City on Friday. Knowing what I know now... I might have gone a different way, but live and learn.

First of all we didn't leave as early as originally planned, since we decided we'd be in work traffic if we tried to leave before 8 am. My goal was between 8-9 (closer to 9). I got up early, told 'L' goodbye, and ended up back in bed for an hour... serves me right! We didn't make it out of the house till around 10 am! UGH!!! and even with that the traffic at the bridge was quite a lot at 10:30 when we got down there. It was stop and go all the way onto the brigde and all the way across. AND... the toll has gone up significantly from 20 (plus) years ago. I was prepared to pay a toll but did NOT expect it to be $8.00!!! I don't know who can afford to go across that bridge very often! Good Grief!

Anyway, Sariah was snapping away taking pic's as we went across to Manhattan. We drove over to Rach's area to park so we could be there for the night and then to be ready to leave Sat. for home. We got an excellent parking spot just up the street from Rach's building and it was free! yippeee!!!! We stopped in and saw the babies (sleeping in their bassinet - Rach was sleeping), saw grandma and 'T' and then headed out to see the sights.

On our way we walked past 'A's school. They are refurbishing the building so it has scaffolding all around it, and they don't have a playground currently, so... they block off the whole street in front of the school durring the day, and the kids run, jump rope, play chalk, etc in the street. As we walked by we happend to see 'A' she was sitting on the sidewalk by the fence (scaffolding fence), I think they were about to line up to go in...

We took the subway from Rach's down to Grand Central Station, then switched to another subway train to get down town toward Ground Zero. The one is of a large banner hainging on one of the nearby buildings, with a picture of what the area will look like when they are done with the reconstruction/rebuilding. Sariah was shocked that anyone would put up tall sky scrapers again... I tried to explain that the idea was to not let 'Fear' and Terrorism win! That we can't be scared and afraid constantly we have to go on living our lives. On this note however, I don't know if they just do not have much in the way of memorial at the moment, or if they don't on purpose, or if I just couldn't find it (I asked for directions to be able to see stuff), but I was somewhat surpirsed there was not more to see. There were dried flowers hanging in the chain link fence around it. Of course 9-11 was just a month before.

At this point we are inside one of the World Trade Center Buildings (the World Financial Center). There is a bridge across the road, and then in this building there is a big windo wall where you can look down in to Ground Zero, and see them working to rebuild.

This one with the yellow scaffolding stuff is actually a wall that will be hydraulically lifted up or something like that and it will go up about 6 flights or perhaps even higher. I don't remember - there was a construction worker inside at the time we were there, telling a school group (his kids were in it), about the rebuilding efforts. In the Financial Building we found a nice little food court and had a yummy lunch on fresh cooked flat bread from Cosi Sandwhich Bar. http://www.getcosi.com/folders.asp?action=display&record=32 Yummy.

I am going to save more pic's and more sight seeing for my next post. There is just so much more to show and tell about.