Ah, Saturday. A day of much fun and frivolity.

The day started out as a grey and drizzly morning, not really foretelling the nicest of weather for a trip to NY. Nevertheless we (the parental and I) headed out to the train station to board a train, of all things. :P As far as I can tell, most trains are quite similar, world-wide, so there's not that much to tell about them. But you can all have a photo anyway.



Feels like you're there with me, doesn't it?

Coming from Australia, my impressions of Americans have been tainted quite severely by the television I've watched and the movies flung my way. For some reason I wasn't expecting it to be quite as multicultural as it is. My viewing experiences have shown me a mainly white America, whereas my actual experiences show me large proportions of Blacks and Hispanics. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, I'm just saying it's different to what I expected.

However, regardless of what I may or may not have been expecting, the girl I was sitting next to on the train made me giggle. Her name, believe it or not, was Destiny. I never really thought people with that name actually existed! I was sure it was just a myth propagated by the media to make it seem as though the 60s never ended. And she spent the vast majority of the trip with her mobile phone glued to her ear as she called various people in a voice that could rival Mickey Mouse for the squeakiest ever invented.

Thankfully, she got off fairly early along the train line and I was able to resume normal functioning by gazing intently out the window at the Manhattan skyline as it approached. By this stage the sky was clearing and the sun was peeking out, giving the faintest hope of beautiful weather.

We got off at Penn Station and then hopped on a subway which took us down to South Ferry. Interestingly, while the walls in the subway cars may have been mostly scrubbed free of tag-paint, you can still see where the graffitti has been... pretty much on about 90% of the available wall/door space. I guess it's just an indelible part of what NYC subway system is like. Many of them also have an American flag painted on the outside near the door. That's just in case you forget which country you're in. At least the ones we were in didn't smell and contained a minimised proportion of creepy old homeless men due to the large number of friendly looking tourists heading downtown.

Saturday must be Tourist day in NYC. As such, when getting off at South Ferry, the easiest way to find the ticket office and the queue for the ferry to Liberty and Ellis Islands is to follow the hoardes of tourists flowing towards them.

And where there are tourists, there are buskers. And what buskers there were! None of this silly busking by playing regular popular songs on a guitar business! Each one was meticulously dressed in a ridiculous outfit. From posing as the Statue of Liberty herself, with that lovely green complexion, to standing around with a large (around 2 metres long) live snake, hoping people will pay to hold it, each busker was an individual.
My personal favourite was the one standing by the queue to the ferry. He may not have had the brightest clothes, but he certainly made up for it with his rainbow wig and quick thinking. Every few minutes he'd speak to someone in the queue, asking them where they're from and ask them to join in in his act. At one point I saw a man juggling beside him, a few minutes later he was asking a lady from Germany to dance a German jig for everyone. She declined, but when she did so, he launched into a random German song, playing on his guitar and cramming in more German phrases and jokes than you'd think were possible. Between acts he'd keep telling everyone to smile, for today is a happy day and there is no reason to look so miserable. He made it impossible to hold back a smile. Not surprisingly, his tip hat was brimming with one-dollar bills.

Alongside this smattering of street entertainment came the tourist-leeches. You know the ones -- the merchandise sellers, with a million mini Statues of Liberty, Empire State Buildings and I [heart] NY t-shirts. There are the fake/stolen watch, sunnies and Prada handbag salesmen. You know it's suspicious when they start unzipping suitcases and call out "Prada Handbags" to you as you walk along, minding your own business. And you can see they're keeping it all together for a quick getaway in case a policeman strolls by.

Now that I have set the scene, let me give you all some general advice in case any of you decide to visit the Statue of Liberty one day:

Do:

Bring plenty of water and good food with you.

Don't:

Rely on the local vendors to provide you with good food or honest service. The sandwiches we bought gave one of us a nasty case of indigestion, and when I purchased two drinks it cost me $5.50. The nasty drinks vendor tried to only give me back $3.50 change from a $20 note. I had to go back and demand my change.

Do:

Buy your tickets at least 2 days in advance. Also, make sure you get a time pass observatory ticket to let you into the monument itself.

Don't:

Leave it to the day you arrive and then stand in a ferry ticket queue for 20 minutes in the blazing hot sun only to find out that you won't be allowed up the statue at all. You're only allowed onto the island with the ticket. If you want to go into the statue, you need some silly time pass, which will let you up to the Observatory level (16 floors up), apparently... I wouldn't know for sure. Plus, these time passes are pretty much only available well in advance. But don't assume you're getting anywhere near the face or crown of the nice lady of liberty even if you do have a time pass. I think there'd have to be some bribery/sexual favours involved to get up that high.

Do:

Send someone over to the ferry queue STRAIGHT AWAY when you get there.

Don't:

Go la la la... oh let's get some ferry tickets, then meander over to the ferry queue and go SHIT! A 40 minute wait?!

Do:

Bring a hat, sunnies and sunscreen for the time you will be waiting in queues.

Don't:

Turn into a baked vegetable, like I did.

Do:

Allow heaps of extra time for all sorts of delays. Allow at least 5 hours for the whole experience of ticket-buying and getting through the queues and sightseeing on Liberty and Ellis Islands.

Don't:

Don't look at it rationally and think 'an hour to get there, an hour in each place, half an hour to get back' because you will be SORELY disappointed.

Do:

Bring a healthy sense of humour. And only a small/medium-sized backpack.

Don't:

Take it the wrong way when you realise that the 40 minute long ferry queue was actually for the queue for just the security tent where they make you take off you belt and shoes and anything even remotely metal. The Americans are WAY paranoid, and not only do they tell you to take all locks off your luggage at airports as your bags WILL be searched, but they also figure that each visitor to the Statue of Liberty is a potential terrorist and they will go out of their way to inconvenience you. It doesn't matter that you can't even go into the damn statue, you're a threat for just walking AROUND it.

Makes you feel so proud to be an American, doesn't it?

Do:

Go on some of the complimentary group tours run on each island by the people who work there.

Don't:

Pay the extra money for the audio tour. It's mostly a waste of time and money on Liberty Island, unless you're really interested in knowing in great detail just how many years it took to build, etc. I did like the audio tour in the Ellis Island museum, but it went on and on and on ...


All in all, Liberty Island was kind of disappointing, though very pretty:





Check out the vultures with cameras:



Look: A Liberty Island cup on Liberty Island with a SWAT team member in the background. Why do they need SWAT team members there?



Ellis Island was very interesting; the audio tour gave you lots of information. But then, I don't know how much I might have gotten from the free tours put on by the people who work there. It makes you appreciate the age we live in when you hear about the appalling conditions people went through. If you were female you HAD to have a male escort to leave the island after arriving. As such lots of women married on the spot. Can you imagine marrying someone you'd met that day just to enter a country?

After months in ships to get there, you could be sent back if you were deemed unhealthy. Not only were they concerned about basic illnesses, but if you were considered mentally unhealthy it could be just as bad. They'd mark an X on you with chalk and then try to determine whether you're crazy or not. One of the indicators of mental instability, apparently, is EXCESSIVE SMILING. Call me crazy, but I couldn't stop grinning after I heard that.

Ellis Island museum pics:





It ended up taking us all afternoon just to see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, so don't think you can squeeze too much more in.
On the way back to the train, the last few impressions were that being in NYC is very much like being in all those movies and TV shows that I've seen... everywhere you turn is a surprise. Outside Madison Square Gardens were a line of women sitting on the footpath, meditating. Just before the station I saw a large black woman telling her friend: : "You gonna regret that, girlfriend!" Cliches! Cliches are everywhere!

And finally, some more random pretty pictures I took. One in Battery Park, the other on the train home.