Day 2: Lower Manhattan

Getting up early trying to make it to Vassey street in time to get "day of" tickets to the 9/11 memorial. Bus went much faster than yesterday so we actually arrived earlier than anticipated (by a good 30 minutes). Stood in line for about an hour and picked up our tickets.

Walked around lower manhattan seeing the federal reserve (from the outside only), the new York stock exchange, federal hall, Trinity Chapel, then made our way to the memorial at our assigned time of 10 o'clock.

The memorial was very nice. We had our tickets checked 3 times before we went through security, at which point they were scanned, stamped, punched and so on. The memorial was beautiful with it's trees and the pools.

After the memorial we headed for battery park and got in line for the ferry to Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.

The statue of liberty is more impressive in person. We ate lunch on liberty island, took some pictures and hoppd back on the ferry for Ellis Island.

I don't think it's possible for anyone in the WORLD to not be related to someone that came through Ellis island. Considering in a 45 year period 26 Milliion immigrants passed through, I think it has been called the largest voluntary exodus in recorded history. The history in this place was humbling when considering the sacrifices these people made to give better opportunities to their children.

Just too bad this generation couldn't hold up those opportunities. As we made our way to the subway, we crossed paths with protestors who have beef with the so called 'fat cats' on wallstreet. Scary times for out generation, but makes for good vacation memories.

The city must have been still half asleep (or hung over) when we came in on the subway this morning, cause there was a lot more excitement in the afternoon. We got a couple of videos of performers "singing for their supper".

Last big thing for the day is the Empire State building. We had a hard time planning what to plan on time wise for it, because we had heard everything from 15 minutes to 2.5 hours. For us it ended up taking about 45 minutes to go up. We came out on the observation deck a little after sunset. It was really crowded but beautiful. We got some really great pictures from this amazing perspective.

At the bottom of the empire state building, we got some authentic NYC pizza, and took a quick trip to Times Square again (took more pictures) before buzzing home.