Liberty

The day began in the hotel with sore feet from lots of walking the day before. We decided to get breakfast on the go somewhere, so after the usual trip in the metro we stopped at a street salesman to get a cream cheese bagel and a donut. This is quite a common sight in New York city. Many people stop to get a bite to eat at such places. A two dollar breakfast is ideal prior to work, isn’t it?
After we ate we went looking for ground zero, because that was our morning plan. At first we didn’t really know where to look because every building so high. Soon we saw street salesmen everywhere looking for innocent tourists to sell their booklets too. He told us about the new WTC buildings. It were going to be four towers of which two are already finished. Ground zero itself was quite impressive. There were two giant holes in the ground were the twin towers used to be. Up close you could see that the holes were actually fountains with the names of all the victims engraved in its marble fence.
After ground zero we went to south ferry to go to Staten island. We arrived there and had a discussion about what we wanted to go and see. Many of us agreed in wanting to see the statue of liberty up close. We bought a ticket ($18 return + audio tour) and waited in a very long line for about an hour and a half. When sailing closer and closer I thought to myself: “Hmm, I expected it to be bigger”. Even though it was not quite what I expected it to be it was still impressive to see such a historical monument in real live.