Sharp's Travels

We booked a tour into New York City for today. We left by bus from the nearby KOA Kampground at 7:30 am. We had a big, comfortable bus with 29 people aboard plus our guide, Woody. It was about a 2 hour ride. From 25 miles away you could see the Empire State Building come into view.
We passed by the Giants and Jets Football Stadium and headed for the special lane just for buses as we headed into the Lincoln Tunnel. The tunnel is 1 ½ miles long and 75 feet under the water. There are 3 tubes going into the tunnel, 2 lanes each. It is monitored for quality of air and has TV cameras to watch everything going on down there. The tunnel cost $190 million to build and handles about 30.5 million vehicles per year.
We entered lower Manhattan and then passed by Ground Zero. There wasn’t much to see. They had it all fenced off and had lots of machinery in there digging. There hasn’t been any building started as yet. They do have a sphere that used to be by the Twin Towers set up in a park as a temporary memoriam. It shows the damage done to it during the attack. It is set up with an eternal flame.
We were dropped off to take the ferry to Liberty Island to see the Statue of Liberty. It was a gift from France in 1886. The Lady is 150.9 feet tall. She weights over 265 tons and is totally made out of copper. We walked all the way around the base. She is an awesome site. In order to go inside you need to get tickets about 2 months in advance. However, if we’d had more time, we could have gone inside. The Park Ranger notice I was wearing a Packer jacket and asked where we were from in Wisconsin. He was also from there. He asked if we were going inside, we said no, and he offered to mark our tickets so we could go in. Darn, our tour was leaving the island in 20 minutes and that would not give us time to take advantage of his offer!
We re-boarded the ferry and they took us to Ellis Island, gateway for immigrants between 1892-1924. 12 million immigrants passed through. 40% of all Americans can trace their ancestry to Ellis Island. Our guide Woody’s father passed through here coming from France at the age of 18 yrs.
We walked through Battery Park after we got off the ferry then boarded the bus and headed to South Street Seaport where we were dropped off again for lunch. Gay and & headed for a New York Deli to get a sandwich and then back to the port to capture a picture of the Brooklyn Bridge and the tall sailing ships docked there.
Back on board the bus we headed to the lower east side and on through China town. We didn’t realize China town was so huge in New York.
We passed by the Manhattan Bridge, it has a different more elegant stone archway for an entrance. Also went by Madison Square Garden, this is where they have the ice skating rink in the winter.
We stopped at the Empire State Building. It was built in 14 months and opened to the public. 4,000000 go through it each year. We worked our way through the line and took an elevator up to the 80th floor. They shuffle people off this elevator and onto another to go up the remaining 6 floors. The views from up there were awesome. We picked the perfect day to be up there, you could see for miles.
We jumped back on the bus and were taken by Rockefeller Center and Radio City Music Hall. We saw SAX 5th AVENUE and Macy’s Department store, which takes up an entire block.
We were dropped off at Times Square and saw the ball they drop on New Year’s Eve, the ABC studio where Good Moring America is filmed. Gay took lots of pictures and even had time to have New York’s best cheese cake at Junior’s.
At 5pm we were headed back out of the city. It was a great day and we were back to the campground before dark. We are so glad we decided to go.
Gay has uploaded pictures of the day. See album: New York City