Tuesday, July 28, 2015

New York Take Two

I stayed up until 1:30 working on this post.  Then it crashed. Frustrating.  Here is the post about our day in New York....for the second time.  Last night when we checked in the lady told us to come to the front office at 8:30 to buy ferry tickets to get to the place to buy ferry tickets for the Statue of Liberty.  She said it would be $2 instead of $7.  I asked if we could buy them now, but she said we would have to wait until 8:30.  When the store finally opened at 8:30, the lady there said they didn't sell them anymore.  Again, frustrating.  We were pointed to a trailer that sold the tickets.  They were going to be $7. After awhile I realized that the tickets were going to get us to the New York side, where we would then buy tickets to the Statue of Liberty.  I had heard that the New Jersey side was a better way to get there.  I asked the guy about it.  He wrote us a map so we were able to get to a ferry that took us to the New Jersey ticket buying side.  The tickets for that ferry were $2.  We missed the ferry by about 30 seconds and had to wait 30 minutes for the next one.  The ferry basically took people across the street/river.  It was so short.  Once we were off that ferry I headed to the ticket counter.  I was anxious, so I walked pretty fast. Once I got there I asked the lady if she had any pedestal tickets left. She asked how many I needed.  Seven.  She said, "You're living right.  I have seven tickets left."  I did a little dance and she put a sign saying the pedestal tickets were sold out for the day.
Preston & Stockton waiting in line for the ferry
 Jorja, Preston, Stockton, Maysen
 Dad had his own special spot
We stopped at Ellis Island first.  We tried to do the audio tour.  It was great at Alcatraz, and this is run by the same company.  The audio tour was so confusing here.  We were supposed to press numbers, but they said them all at once.  We never figured it out right and eventually took them off.  The kids didn't even want to attempt the audio tour at Liberty Island.
View from ferry
I had Preston wear his orange Hawaii outfit again.  I realized that would be the perfect thing for me to spot him in the crowds of New York.
 Preston
 Stephanie & Preston
 Original torch
 Jorja, Stockton, Mike, Preston, Maysen ~ on the pedestal
 Maysen, Jorja, Mike. Stockton, Stephanie, Preston
 Dad
 Preston climbing on this weird nook on the pedestal
I wanted to get tickets to go up to the crown.  I tried several weeks ago to get them, but they were sold out until October.  Whoops.  These are the stairs that we would have walked up if we were able to do that. Pretty cool.
 Dad, Stephanie, Preston, Maysen
Jorja, Stockton, Mike ~ Liberty Island
 Dad
There were these cool free phone charging stations.  This one was all busy, so we didn't get to try them out, but how great is this?
 Ferry to New York
We took the ferry from Liberty Island over to the New York side.  We then walked up to the 911 Memorial.  We just went to the memorial, we didn't go to the museum inside.  That would have been cool, but I wasn't sure how Jorja and Preston would react.  It's once thing to go to sites and learn about wars that happened generations ago, it's another thing to learn about something that happened a decade ago.  I didn't want to scare them.
Preston & Maysen
 The memorial was beautiful
 Stockton, Preston, Stephanie, Jorja, Maysen
 Stephanie at the corner of Wall Street and Broadway
 Stockton Exchange
We went and saw the place where George Washington was sworn into office as President.  Hardly anyone was there.  As we left a giant crowd came in.  Perfect timing.
Washington statue
It was cool to see where George Washington stood, even if it is now on a wall.
Stephanie & Preston
This is the bible that was used when George Washington was sworn in. A few other presidents used it as well, but George Washington is the coolest.
 Preston, Jorja & Maysen
We took a train uptown.  I wanted to go to Serendipity.  I wasn't sure what it was exactly, but I new a lot of my friends loved it.  It was a little hole in the wall place.  The line was out the door, but it didn't feel like we waited too long.  The prices were more than I anticipated.  We decided to just do dessert. Dessert for dinner.  The kids were okay with that.
Dad
 Preston & Stockton shared a cake with ice-cream on top
 Jorja with mint/hot fudge
 Maysen with mint chocolate chip
 Dad with butter pecan/hot fudge
 Mike with an oreo float
 Stephanie with a frozen hot chocolate
 Preston being a cool dude
We walked from Serendipity to Times Square.  We went through Central Park and Rockefeller Center along the way.
Jorja, Maysen, Stephanie
Preston, Stockton, Mike ~ Central Park
 Mike & Maysen
Times Square was smaller than I realized.  There were lots of characters trying to get pictures taken.  Preston laughed when he saw Elmo.  No way was I paying for a picture of Preston with superheros. He's not into them anyway.  There was a Mario.  If we did any, that would be the one.

It was a little confusing finding our way back to the motorhome in New Jersey, but we did it.  We had a five block walk from the train station. It wasn't bad, but Stockton's legs were hurting him a lot.  He got to the motorhome first.  When he realized it was locked he over reacted by falling down in front of it.  It was pretty funny.  I tried to get a picture of him, but he was too quick for me.  Preston did a little pose though.
Preston & Stockton
Jorja and I took advantage of the campground showers when we got back.  We felt pretty sticky.  Jorja was nice to wait for me.  Lots of walking.  Lots of fun.  I think today turned out pretty great.

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