22nd - Island hopping

I had not slept on the flight which meant that when arriving at the hotel I had been up for more than 20 hours. When going to bed at around 0130 I planned to get some extra sleep and take it easy today. Guess who woke up at 0700. I managed to force another 2 hours sleep in but after that I gave up, got up, had a shower and left the hotel to start exploring.

The hotel is 2 blocks away (for those who know NYC it’s located on 8^th Ave between 44^th and 45^th street) from Time Square so I started off by going there. I wasn’t too impressed and started walking south towards Lower Manhattan to see how things looked. And weather was clear and nice though there was a fairly chilly breeze present. 2 hours later I found myself queueing for a ticket to Liberty and Ellis Island; a short and manageable queue of app. 10 minutes. The queue for the ferry was a bit different; it took an hour to reach the terminal building where you went through an airport-like security check (though liquids were OK) before you came out on the other side and boarded the ferry.

After being fully loaded with tourists we took off towards Liberty Island. To be honest, the Statue of Liberty is just that – a statue. A big, recognizable one, but just a statue none the less. I spent a bit less than an hour walking around on the relatively small island seeing Lady Liberty from every angle before returning to the ferries and going to the next stop; Ellis Island. This island was where all immigrants arrived when wanting to enter the country. The museum was quite interesting. Also, you could get some pretty good photos from there of the Lower Manhattan skyline.

Statue of Liberty. 

Ellis Island seen from Liberty Island.

The hall where all the immigrants were registered. 

The bunk beds immigrants had access to when arriving in New York 

(and registering them couldn't be done before night time).

Lower Manhattan seen from Ellis Island.

I grabbed the last ferry from the island at 1715, unfortunately I could easily have spent more time there, and returned to the mainland. From there I started slowly going north again and went through Chinatown and continued on through Little Italy where I had dinner. I realized this was my first meal of the day, the day’s activities had been distracting, and kept going north afterwards across Union Square, past Empire State Building and back to Time Square which now, in the dark, looked much more impressive.

I went to my hotel room to get rid of some things I didn’t need before continuing at 2100 to The Rock – the Rockefeller Center – where I went up to the observation levels and had a beautiful view of the city. The wind had died down after coming back from Ellis Island which had made the evening much more comfortable than the day, but up here on 66^th – 68^th floor it was not surprisingly a bit windy.

Looking north (the dark area is Central Park).

Looking east.

Looking south 

(the tall white illuminated building in the distance is World Trade Center One).

Rockefeller Center.

I left after staying there a bit more than an hour and was back at the hotel around midnight.

Time Square.