New York revisited

My trip to Miami airport was uneventful and the people at security didn't question me about the use of a British drivers licence as i.d.. The flight was o.k. but I was sad to be returning to the cold north east again especially after the lovely temperatures in Miami. I caught the train from Newark airport and waited at Secaucus station for my ride. It was good to see Ian again, he had been to Vietnam since I had last seen him and he loved it so much that he is thinking of going there to teach next year. Cool. I am not the person to talk to if you don't want to travel or live in another country. Find someone else to tell you you're crazy because I won't. I am not even planning on staying long in the U.K. after this trip. If I can I'm going to get a job in Italy or Spain. If I can't get work in Europe then I will consider at looking at Vietnam or Malaysia. My mother doesn't know about this plan yet and hopefully she never will. It is not something that would make her happy, she has already told me that she is counting down the days until I get home.
As soon as we got back to Ian's house we were pretty much out the door again, it had been Josh's,Ians brother, birthday the day before and we were going to his favourite Japanese restaurant for his birthday dinner. The food was good, I would have enjoyed the chance to go back and try some of the other things on the menu.
The following morning I fell back into the routine of having Ian drop me off at Secaucus station but instead of catching the train into Manhattan I caught it to Hoboken. Hoboken doesn't have much history and is now mostly a collection of new skyscrapers, but Frank Sinatra was born there, so that's interesting. I caught the Light Rail to Liberty Park and then had to walk a mile to the ferry terminal. I had a reservation to go to the crown of Liberty, it was the reason I had come back to New York earlier than planned.I was really excited. I went from the Jersey shore because the Park Service website said that the queues were shorter here than on the Battery Park side in Manhattan. And it didn't matter to me which one I went from as either one was just as easy to get to than the other. The ferry went to Ellis Island first and I managed to be the only person on a ranger guided tour. The tour was good and I learned a load of stuff that I hadn't known and will probably retain forever as I have a penchant for useless information. They had everything there, a railway ticket office, a hospital, restaurants, and a baggage hall. People would have to go and sit in the registration hall and when they were seen by the immigration guy would have to answer the questions correctly or they would be held until their case could be investigated. At the back of the hall were a set of stairs called the "Stairs of Separation". If you went down the right aisle you were going to New York City, if you went down the left you were going outside New York state and if you went down the middle aisle you were to be held on Ellis Island until your case could be heard. They didn't allow in single women as if you were travelling to America by yourself that meant you were a member of the oldest profession and not the kind of person the new country wanted. You also weren't allowed in if you were pregnant, you would be held until you gave birth and it was ascertained that the baby was healthy and would be alive to grow up and be a good citizen. Then you could enter the country. If you had to be deported the ship company had to bear the cost of your passage back as according to immigration they shouldn't have given you passage to America in the first place if you weren't likely to get in.
Liberty Island was no less interesting than Ellis. If you have reservations to go to the crown you have to go and check in with a ranger when you arrive. They have a whole load of instructions for you, one of which is that no bags are allowed inside the statue, everything has to be put into a locker. And for once this rule is enforced, I say this in light of the number of times I have had to try and squeeze my small bag into the overhead plane compartment when it is already filled with small suitcases. Some people don't understand the concept of hand luggage and all of the airlines I have flown with here in the U.S. don't enforce their own hand luggage regulations. Some American travellers must be very unhappy when they fly in Europe, because generally European airlines do enforce luggage size restrictions. After the locker station you have to go through security, I bypassed the queue because of the crown reservation and then bypassed a few people who were struggling to out of their jackets to put them through the x - ray machine. There always seem to be some people who are constantly surprised that you have to empty out your pockets to go through security!
In the pedestal there is a small exhibition on the history and building of the statue. Of course it was sent to the Americans by the French people to symbolise their friendship and to celebrate the centenary of the American War of Independence which France helped the U.S. win against the British. The Union part of the U.S. seems to focus more on the War of Independence, whereas the South seems to focus on the Civil War.I hadn't known that at the base of the statue Liberty can be seen stepping out from chains. And that Gustave Eiffel helped with the construction design of the statue. There is a lift in the statue but it isn't working at the moment so to get to the top you have to climb almost 400 steps. I was reasonably sure I was up to the task. The first few flights weren't a problem but I am glad that there was no one behind me, I was soon wheezing and gasping for air. Then the stairs changed to an enclosed spiral staircase and before I knew it I was in her head. Considering that the statue is so huge the "room" in her head is surprisingly small as are the windows that make up her crown. The view isn't especially amazing but it was really cool to see Manhattan through those windows and to look up at the torch from there. A kind ranger took my photo for me and after fifteen minutes it was back down again. I walked around the island before grabbing the ferry to go to Battery Park in Manhattan.
I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around lower Manhattan, including Ground Zero. Although in all honesty there isn't much to see there, it's a building site and it's screened off so you can't even see what progress they've made. What is incredible is the size of the site, it's sixteen acres and that is a huge chunk of land, you look at the skyline and it's like someone has just erased a large part of it. Other than Central Park I don't think that is as big an empty space in the whole of Manhattan and of course it is prime real estate being just a block away from Wall St..I walked back to Penn Station, which is about fifty blocks and met up with Ian at Secaucus for the ride back to his place. We had a nice dinner at home and we just relaxed.
Friday dawned grey and rainy, but at least it wasn't snowing. Ian dropped me off in the morning and off I went into Manhattan. Ian had lent me his umbrella so it wasn't too bad walking through the rain. I don't know what it is but if I can I would much rather walk places then take public transport. During my time here at first I thought it was because I was on a budget and wanted to spend as little as possible and if I could get around for free I would. And that may be part of it but Darren and I spend a lot of time walking when we are on holiday together and often end up walking miles in a day. I don't know what it is. I went to the old meat packing district to walk along the "High Line", an abandoned elevated railway line that is in the process of being converted to a garden. So far they have completed about six blocks worth and it's amazing. Even on a wet,miserable day it was stunning and I would love to see it in the spring / summer. It's a good idea and a great use of the space. I walked back to mid-town and went to Grand Central Terminal for the station tour. The tours are run by volunteers and our guide Justin was passionate about the subject. He started by giving us an outline of the history of the area including that originally only the tip of Manhattan island was inhabited and was surrounded by a wall where Wall St. is today. If you lived further up than the island than this you lived in the "boonies", so it was a surprise when St. Patricks cathedral was built up there. According to him this was because the original settlers didn't want a Catholic church within the city limits.
We got to to inside the old Bowers Bank building which is now Cipriana restaurant, for a bank it's a pretty fancy building. Next door is the Channin building, it has an amazing lobby covered in aluminum, an expensive material when the building was built and interesting German Art Deco wall engravings. We went into the lobby of the Chrysler building but not to the observation deck, I think I will do that another day. I think the Chrysler building is my favourite, it's very beautiful and as Justin would say it is architecture and not just a building. Same as Grand Central itself, it was designed with people in mind and the use to which the building was going to be put. Justin laid down on the floor in the middle of the great hall in Grand Central to demonstrate that the flooring blocks were configured to the length of the average persons leg and the width to their arm. He then proceeded to walk down the stairs backwards because the stairs are so well designed that you need to look when you walk up or down them. He stood in one of the arched areas and you can hear another person when they stand in the opposite corner and speak as the sound is carried across the arch in the ceiling. Very cool. We saw the Oyster bar, haven't been there yet, not sure if I will go. I am not very trusting of eating shellfish here, I am sure it's fine but since I only started eating shellfish in Japan, I am not sure if I am yet comfortable enough to eat it anywhere else.
Ian had found out, as others have, that I have never seen the movie the "Big Lebowski" so he decided that my life was incomplete not having seen this classic and that this situation should be rectified. He left work early and we stopped at the off licence on the way home to pick up the drinks for the evening. He was going to be making "White Russians", I wasn't sure why but I wasn't going to complain. After dinner we made our drinks and watched the movie, as soon as I saw the main character I understood why we were drinking "White Russians" because that's what he drinks. The movie was OK, I generally don't do well with movies that my friends have hyped to me and I was a bit wary of watching this one as I don't like stupid humour movies. There was some low humour in it but generally it's a good movie, I should probably watch it again as I am sure I didn't get all the gags in it. Needless to say it was a late night and I am glad that I didn't have to get up the following morning.
It was raining the next morning, if anything heavier than the day before. I spent the early part of the day in the house on the computer trying to update this and uploading my photos. I had filled up my big external hard drive with movies and t.v. series when I was at Moraya's so I had bought a new memory stick so see me through until I went home. I figured that I only needed something small as I only had another week to go. I would buy a new, larger external hard drive when I got back to the U.K. and I would get Darren to advise me which one to buy. I think if I have my way I will probably just buy another WD one, maybe even the same size. Ian and I went to a book store in the afternoon as I was getting cabin fever and I wanted to get out of the house.I am sad to say that I bought another book, but in my defence I still hadn't used the gift card that M & C had bought me for Christmas so I had to buy a book. And another point in my favour was that I was able to get a book from my book list. So it's all good. In the evening we went to a bar, it was one of Ian's friends birthday, at one point on the way there I thought we would have to turn back. It was still raining heavily and the winds were bad, several roads were blocked by downed trees. We got there in the end but didn't stay long, both of us wanted to get home and didn't understand why the girl hadn't cancelled in light of the weather. But there you go.