The Big Apple

On Saturday morning, early (6 a.m.) we left to board our tour bus in Northbridge for a day-trip to New York, Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Luigi was very surprised to see how big NYC is...it took 1 hour from the time that we reached the city until we actually arrived at Battery Park to pick up the ferry. He also said that this (the congestion and sky-scrapers) was his pre-conception of USA before arriving in our 'forest'. He had earlier disclosed that he was surprised that Americans live in the forest (not as many trees in Italy as we have here).
The weather was ideal for such a trip. We awoke to 50F at 5 a.m., and temps reached high 70s during the day.
There was a great deal of Police and Fire Department presence on the streets of NYC. I learned this morning on the news that there was an alert for dirty bombs that Security was watching for. Glad I didn't know that before going.
The wait in Battery Park for the ferry was 1 1/2 hours, a looonnnngggg line, but street entertainers were frequent along the line....steel drum players, acrobats, fiddlers, Spider Man, etc. The line moved smoothly and was in shade all the way....this is a beautiful park. The ferry stopped at Statue of Liberty to let off some passengers, but we chose to stay on board and use our time at Ellis Island. We were close enough to the statue to take some great pictures from all angles.
We picked up audio-tour tapes at the entrance to Ellis Island for a self-paced tour. They are well worth the $6.00 if anyone plans this tour. Even though Tony and I went there 2 years ago, we still saw exhibits yesterday that we missed before, and I know that there are sections of the buildings that we still need to discover. We actually had about 2 1/2 hours there before needing to take ferry back to Battery Park to meet the bus for trip home. This is definitely the way to go...leave the driving to someone else. Big comfortable coach, smooth AC ride, and a stop mid-way to stretch legs. We arrived in Mendon at 10:30 p.m., and hit the pillow quickly. My feet were tired.
Now, it's back to late summer stuff here in New England...baskets of ripening tomatoes, cucumbers, and corn. I've just taken out the dehydrator to dry some fruits for winter. This is a great time of summer! Yum!!