NY/DC Day 3

On the schedule today was the Statue of Liberty and to go across the Brooklyn bridge. Let us go on another photo collage for the day.

This is where the trail terminal was. We had to go under the water to get to NY.

Isn't he so hansom!

The train let us out just around the corner from the World Trade Center memorial.

The names of those who died in the building, fire fighters and those on the planes surrounded the two fountains.

The new building. The Freedom Tower. Not quite opened yet. It is designed to represent both of the twin towers.

The famous bull. Yet again, so many people that to get a picture of all of it there were people in it. Funny story about this though, I was talking to Michael about how I would like to see this if I could. Then I looked up and saw a big crowd of people and looked at what they were looking at and it was the bull. Haha

We finally were in the line for the boat to go to the Statue of Liberty and there was this statue that of people pulling a guy out of the water. I thought it was cool. The guy that is "the water" was actually in the water.

In line for the boat.

The tall one is the Freedom Tower

On the boat. Windy as any boat is.

There she is!

The line to get back on the boat after you saw Miss Liberty. It took us probably about an hour to get back on the boat.

View from the island. That is a black spot on my camera. That's why it is in so many pictures.

This is the spiral staircase from the pedestal leading to the crown.

It was so ridiculously tight. It felt like I was climbing a sideways ladder. It was easier to go sideways then forward like regular stairs.

The inside layering

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WE MADE IT! It was SO hot and humid and steep to get there. Can you tell?

A view out of one of the windows in the crown.

The inside of the crown, just below the spires.

Michael had to crouch down in most of the spots on the small platform at the top.

It was really fun even with the heat and humidity

The torch. This window did not open.

The inside of the hair.

Can you see her face? The eyes and nostrils are open.

If you look really close you can see the ladder that leads up to the torch. Back in the day you were able to go up to the torch but not anymore.

Michael's second favorite part of the trip, first was flying first class, was that he had a ticket to go all the way to the crown. I only had a ticket to the pedestal. There was some difficulty when we were buying the tickets a few months ago. We could not buy both tickets on the same day and by the time I got around to getting my ticket all the tickets for the crown were sold out. They only sell something like 5 tickets per hour per day. Well, one thing lead to another and I was able to go to the crown too. :) There were some nice older guys working the desk that were tired of people not being able to speak English that they were excited that we could so he gave me a pass to the top to go with Michael. I was excited. Michael was excited that I was able to go to the top but sad because that was the one thing he was going to be able to do that I was not going to do. I could see the torn feelings so I looked for ways to make up for it.

This is the original torch. It was replaced in the 1980's. Because of the design to enable it to be lit from inside let water in which caused corrosion and therefore needing to be replaced.

A model of the inner workings of the statue. See the spiral staircase?

The back of the real thing. We walked all the way from the white tent to the spires on her crown. That is some vertical!

Not sure what he was looking at.

Ellis Island

A picture of back in the day.

I thought the floor all over this building was really cool.

An interesting statement from 1851.

The Registry room back in the day.

The Registry room today.

When we got back there were a lot of street performers. Look at how big that snake is?!!

The squerls are use to being feed. This one was eating right out of these peoples hands.

After we got back from seeing the Statue of Liberty Michael really wanted to bike across the Brooklyn bridge. We ended up renting these City Bikes sponcered from City bank. They have little stations all over the city. It was fun to ride across the bridge. It was also REALLY stressfull. There was a walking lane and a bike lane on the foot bridge across but the people kept walking in the bike lane. I very quickly learned to ding my bell at them. That would work to clear the way about 95%. The other times you had to dodge the people and the bikes going the other way. There was at least once that my handle bars pegged someone in the arm. Woops. She heard my bell though and was so clearly in the bike lane. There is also a time I had to hit the brakes and stop or else I would have collided into 4 other people standing in the bike lane. There was a bike going the other way that had to stop too. We decided to walk back so that we could take it all in. I made sure to stay clearly in the walking lane.

The walking path above the Brooklyn Bridge.

I thought this was cool how all the lines combined.

I love all the lines in this.

The stone working on the bridge.

The Manhattan Bridge.

After the bridge we headed back home. As we were almost to the hotel we saw the Freedom Towers spire was lite in red, white and blue. I got the beast picture I could which was not very good but you can see it in the distance in the middle of the picture.

 

NY/DC Day 2

We tried to find a church that we could go to but the timing and location of trying to find an English sacrament meeting, it just did not work out. We slept without an alarm to wake us up but we were awake by 7. We then got dressed and had breakfast and a pretty low key morning. We left our hotel somewhere around 10 and made our way to New York by way of train.

There are sooooooooo many people in New York! We walked through time square and I couldnt even tell it was anything because there were so many people there. Here are some picture around time square.

We then headed to the Body mussium. I was so excited! It came to Salt Lake for a limited time when I was living in Provo. I could not find anyone that wanted to go with me and I did not want to go alone. The time passed and the exibit left and instantly I was sad that I had not gone. That is totaly my thing. I got very excited when I heard they were in New York. It was awesome. I loved it so much. Michael is not much for musiums and so he took about half the time I did but thats ok. You could only take pictures of one of the exibits or else i Would have taken a million of them. What the body exibit is, is they take real bodies and they take the skin off to display the organs and bones and tendonds and all the inside parts of the body. it was facinating. Here are some pictures of the one that we could take pictures of. We could not use the flash so they are a little blurry.

Two bodies on a horse body

The legs and body of the horse

The legs of the horse

You can see another nody in the distance on the last picture showing the skelliton and blood vessles. inbetween the horses legs you see a red circle. That is the blood vessles of the face and head with everything else removed. It was facinating. there was so many it was almost solid. I loved that exibit so much. It was weird though because there were maybe 10 other people there with us. I asked a worker if it was always that slow and she said sometime and other times it is very crowded so I guess it just depends on the time and the day. It was kind of nice to not have to look around other people for what you wanted to see.

We then went to Central Park. We ended up walking the entire length of it, south to north. It took us around 4 hours to do that! That was a lot longer then I thought it would take us. We were done walking around 3 hours but thought it would be cool to walk the whole thing so we did. We did however catch the train back down. Haha. Here are some pictuers of our walk.

We passed this just before we got to the park. It was so pretty I had to stop and take a picture. Turns out this is a memorial to the Firefighters that died on 9/11

Sorry. I dont know how to rotate the picture right now, This is the building the firefighter memorial is in front of. I thought it looked really interesting as well as burned a little bit.

 

 

 

 

All the taxis going around the statue at the south end of the park

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Statue at the south end of central park. It looked like a Roman Theme

There were so many people in the park. Any spot with grass on it had people laying on it.

My love looking at something

There was only one time that I was in Central Park and could not see the skyline of New York, I thought it was constantly an interesting view.

One of the main playgrounds in the park. The rock you see at the bottom was all over the park. This was the main one played on because it was the biggest and right next to the park. It reminded me on the slick rock in Moab.

There were interesting structures all over the park

Same structure as above.

The road going under the park

There were lots of statues all over the park. I think this is suppose to be Shakespeare.

The famous fountain

There were soooo many people. Its not like the movies were nobody is around.

Cool tunnel structure by the fountain. There was a lady singing opera at the other end. There were street performers everywhere.

These guys were hilarious. They were dancing on roller skates. I wanted to give them money but they did not have a bucket. Michael and I decided they were doing it just for fun. They looked like they loved it. Something not fun though, I saw the guy on the left do the biggest farmers blow into the sun I have ever seen. I gagged as I was telling Michael about it. haha

Not the best picture with the shade but this it where John Lennon died.

Where you could rent boats and row around. We were going to until we saw that the line was about two hours long.

Michael was getting tired of picture taking so I told him to stand there and look like he was having a good time. This is what I got. Haha. I love him.

This was me hanging off the dock to look at the turtles in the water. There were so many of them. There was one that was pestering this other one relentlessly. He would swim real close and then fan him in the face with his hands, over and over again. The other turtle kept snapping at him and swimming away but the other guy wouldn't leave him alone for at least a couple of minutes. It was funny to watch.

So many turtles

A cool view from Central Park

Looking over the lake

A cool stone bridge. This is one spot I was not able to see any buildings.

Somewhere along the way home we passed Madison Square Garden. There were lots of fans for the game tonight.

On the train back to the hotel. It was always so crowded.

After some dinner and a much needed shower we were ready for bed.