September 17th - good-bye New York, we'll miss you!

We needed to be at the airport in the early afternoon to head to Ireland, so we only had 1 thing planned for today - but it was a big one! That statue, on the island in the harbour - that's where we were headed. Our 2-day tickets for the hop-on, hop-off buses had expired so we braved the subway. We headed for Grand Central Station, about a 20-minute walk - there are 2 or 3 stations closer to our hotel, but none of them were claiming to be grand! Although the 42nd Street station is suitably glitzy.

Central Station lives up to its name - it's grand, and it's central.

We sorted out the ticketing (single price per trip anywhere on the network, buy a card & pre-pay enough for all the trips you need to do) and headed down to the trains. They are a lot closer to the ground level than the Sydney underground, you just walk down one short flight of stairs from the street and you're on the platform. It was around 8:30am so our train was full of commuters - we had to wait while one train came & went, which we didn't fit on, but we squeezed our way onto the next one. It was full but not absolutely packed, you could have managed to get a few more people on if you really tried! And a whole heap of people in suits got off at Wall Street so we had more room after that.

We made our way to the last station at the tip of Manhattan, Bowling Green station. No bowling green to be seen although Battery Park is very pleasant - they're obviously still rebuilding after the hurricane last year and there is quite a lot of temporary fencing.

Next we lined up for the ferry. They take security very seriously as it's such a significant American icon, so we had bag checks before we could get on. Then a lovely ferry ride, only about 15 minutes, with spectacular views.

By the way, if you're in New York and short of cash, you can do the Staten Island ferry - it doesn't go to the statue but it goes fairly close and you apparently get a great view of it as well as all those other amazing views of the city and the harbour. And it's a free ferry service.

There is a path all around the base of the Statue of Liberty, so you can see her from all angles.

We couldn't get tickets to go right to the top of the crown, but we could go to the top of the pedestal - that's nearly half way up from the ground to the crown. There was a long queue for the lift, so we took the stairs. There's a small museum inside with lots of information about the statue, as well as replicas of parts of the statue so you can get an idea of the scale.

We walked all around the balconies at the top of the pedestal - the views of the island and back to Manhattan are amazing...

...although it's hard to see much of the statue.

Eventually back to the ferry for the trip back to Manhattan.

After that, we just needed to collect our bags, hail a taxi and head to JFK airport. It’s hard to leave New York after such a short stay although if we were there longer we wouldn’t be able to keep up the same pace!

Some of our favourite things about New York –

All the decorative building details. New York sky-scrapers are not just plain towers, they have all sorts of beautiful and interesting ornamentation.

Signs that catch your eye.

Even McDonalds have signs that match the district (these are 42^nd Street and Chinatown).

Our tour guides – each bus has a tour guide as well as a driver, and each has a wealth of information to share. One specialised in architectural information, one could tell us a million facts about fashion and celebrities, one focussed on the early settlements of each area – even when we had one guide twice for the same route, he gave us a completely different commentary. All of the guides were entertaining, some were very funny. They all complained about real estate prices though.

Another thing we’ll miss about New York: at one point, there was a footpath (sidewalk?) being dug up, and there was a sign next to it saying “What’s going on here?”, followed by an explanation of the work taking place. Well, we used those words a lot over the past 3 days! What’s going on here?