Our Labor Day morning started off with the free breakfast at the hotel at about 6:30AM. We had tickets for the 9/11 Museum at 9:30 and we knew we wanted to do a little exploring while we walked to the museum.
Lots of buildings we've seen on TV, Paul had to get a picture in front of the New York Stock Exchange. Walking around was easier than I thought it would be. That is the benefit of the one way streets! The area around the NY Stock Exchange was blocked off to traffic totally, and there were many security gates. Its amazing how this city works, especially the crazy taxis.
I found it very difficult to smile for the pictures once we got to the Twin Towers site. Knowing what happened there and the lives that were lost was a bit emotional. It added to the emotion knowing that we were exactly 1 week away from the 16th anniversary of 9/11.
The museum was underground, built right where the base of the twin towers were. We saw the twisted support beams, burnt and crushed fire trucks... and many pictures of the victims.The best, and most emotional part was where they walked you through the timeline of the day. You could easily have spent 5 hours there. I highly recommend if you go to NYC, go to this museum. We spent 2.5 hours there and that was with 4 kids, if it had been just Paul and me, we would have been there much longer.
There was so much we learned and relived being there. Something I can't even wrap my head around is the chaos that had to be that day getting everyone out of the area. It was also mind blowing seeing the streets, and knowing how close together things are and how tall the buildings are and knowing where all that debris went when the towers collapsed. Gave a whole new perspective to something I witnessed from TV at 16 years old.
Chloe took a little nap as we walked to Battery Park for our next tour, the Statue of Liberty. We had tickets for going up to the pedestal.
While we waited we had lunch out of a street cart. It wasn't great, but it was edible, probably because we were hungry.
We did some exploring around Battery Park since we still had a little time before we were supposed to get in line for the ferry.
The Koren War memorial was interesting, the kids read the numbers of lives lost and mission soldiers from each country that took part in the war. It seems that this trip as a whole had many heavy moments with the battlefields we toured, the 9/11 museum and the memorials we've seen.
Once we finally went through security and waited in line a bit longer, we boarded the ferry. I stayed on the base level with Chloe, who was sleeping. Paul took the other kids to the top level. They really enjoyed that, pretty sure it was Abigail's favorite part of the trip.
We finally arrived and had to walk through another metal detector. before going up.
Lots of steps up, but what a view! The kids enjoyed learning why she was green, and what the position of her right foot meant.
Sarah and Abby decided that they wanted to stick their heads in Lady Liberty's nose in the museum display. So yes, my kids picked her nose.
When we finished we went to the ranger station and got our Jr. Ranger badges for the Statue of Liberty.
The next stop was Ellis Island.
Yep, another Jr Ranger badge complete! We didn't spend as much time as we wanted there because, well, we were pooped.
On the way back to the parking garage where the van was, Paul took a selfie with the Charging Bull.
As neat and huge as the city was, I was so glad to be headed out and to a place with fewer people. The kids even said it was like going to Disney, you pay a lot and wait in a lot of lines.
Yes, we should have bought a selfie stick.
We would be stopping in Milford Connecticut tonight, a nice, small place. We stopped for Chinese food before going to our hotel, a Marriott where we were also blessed with a complementary upgrade to a 2 Bedroom suite!!! We had two bedrooms, two bathrooms, kitchen, dining area and living room! So much larger than the closet we had in NYC. So. Nice.
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