Coming rapidly to the end of the North American part of our tour, A and I took full advantage of the touristic opportunities that NY offers including a day exploring Hudson Bay, Liberty Island and Ellis Island courtesy of the Statue City cruises.
Having wrestled with the myriad offers of tours around the Statue of Liberty from various providers, we ended up catching our ferry from Battery Park on Manhattan Island on another beautiful summer’s day.
Despite the airport style security check we were able to board our 11:15am sailing without a hitch and spent a glorious couple of hours sailing across Hudson Bay firstly to Liberty Island where we walked up to Liberty’s crown and explored the two museums telling the story of the fund-raising and construction of the Statue in France before transportation to New York in 1886; and then on to Ellis Island where the Immigration centre had been sympathetically restored and the Audio tour/Ranger tour (which we managed to tag on to) gave a fascinating (and quite moving) insight into the history of America’s role in providing opportunities for a new life for European, Middle Eastern and Asian settlors.
The views towards the shores of the Hudson River towards New York City and to New Jersey were striking and A and I then enjoyed a brisk walk back from Battery Park, via Wall Street to Brooklyn Bridge before catching the subway to Grand Central Station - very much a cathedral among train stations as the below photo shows.
Having braved the Subway once, we then took it again in the evening heading to the Yankees Stadium in the Bronx for the game against the Boston Red Sox. It was our first baseball game and whilst I cannot pretend to be very clear about the rules, the game ended very satisfactorily in victory for the NY Yankees - terrific atmosphere and an interesting insight into US sporting culture.
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