Our last full day in NYC......boo hoo it's Day 5

Before I start recreating the events of Day 5 in New York, I just have to say how lucky we were to get this LONG (it's long for us) vacation and get to spend all this time here.  The last day is always the saddest because you know that you have to go back home and face your real life.

But we weren't going to let the sadness of the last day get to us......we were going to go out and make it a GREAT one!

Lucky for us, we had made reservations before we came on this trip to get into some of the more popular places.  So after the morning stop to Starbucks, we headed to the 911 Museum.  We had a reservation time of 10:30.  A short subway ride got us to the museum and thanks to our reservation, we didn't have to stand in line and got right in.

One of the most somber and quiet places I've ever been.  The Museum is built on the site of one of the fallen buildings and many of the beams and concrete are part of the foundation of this Museum.

Walking around and seeing this stuff makes your hearts heavy and reminds you of that awful day.

Hopefully something like this will never happen again.

 

 

Seeing the personal effects, photos, and hearing the stories of the people that were there that day.....makes it more personal and connected to the terrible tragedy those families had to go through.

We took a couple of hours going through the Museum and by this time we were getting hungry.  We had a 3pm appointment to take the boat over to see the Statue of Liberty......so we hopped on the subway and went in search of someplace to eat.

Here's what we found:

Located in Greenwich Village (although we had no clue what area we were in)

Quiet, kinda darkish place that had lots of board games you could sit and play while you drink.  We, however, were only there for lunch.  We decided to share lunch, which we do quite often.  This way we get to try more things on the menu and don't get such big meals.  We shared spicy fried chicken served with Mac & Cheese (I am seriously on a mac & cheese kick right now) and a Cobb Salad.  While we ate, we plotted out the subway route map so that we could get back to the dock where the boat left from.  Good thing we had 1 week unlimited pass on the subway......because we really used them!

We got to the boat terminal in plenty of time and in fact, they let us get on early.  Here's the boats that take you across the river to Liberty Island.

We sat on the upper deck and the view was amazing.  The skyline.....the water.....Miss Statue of Liberty.....everything.  And once again we had another glorious day (a little cloudy) to enjoy our adventure.

The closer you got to this lovely lady.......the more pictures you wanted to take.  She stands there so regal and majestic out there.

What an awesome and incredible sight she is.

With advance reservations you can get tickets to go into the crown or into the pedestal.  I bought our tickets about 1 month before we left and got the last tickets for the pedestal on that day.  How awesome that was going to be......getting to climb into the pedestal.

But............this blog is already gone on for too long and I don't want to bore you with any more today......so I'll save our Statue of Liberty adventure for the next one!