Day15 New York (Sat 13th)

We woke this morning to the sound of someone operating our door card reader. Later we discovered they must have opened the door because the latch had been straightened out. Hope it was just the cleaners. It was 8:30am and we had been asleep since about 11:30-12. This tourist business is hard work. Well we’re on out way by about 9, determined to catch our bus to other exciting adventures. lol The stop is just across the road from our motel, on 7th Ave, just up from Broadway and Time Square. Lately we find ourselves coming home stuffed, just as the young ones are going out.

We walk across the road and within about 5 minutes a bus comes along and we have good seats up on top. The weather is great, in contrast to last night’s drizzling wet. We head “downtown” through Time Square on our way to the financial district, Wall St and Greenwich Village areas of the Manhattan borough of New York.

At Pier 17 we got off the bus, into line with 100 Asians, for the complimentary ferry ride out to Liberty Island (not to get off) for a view of the statue, under Brooklyn Bridge, down to Manhattan Bridge and back again to Pier. I took many pics on this day, such a nice day.
We then get on the next tour bus over to the Brooklyn borough (2.5M people) and toured around. We got off the bus and walked back across the Brooklyn Bridge which apparently is very romantic. We stopped at Starbucks for a bite and a drink as we got a little hot walking around. We walked to a stop and caught the bus again around the loop, through China Town, but this time got off at Ground Zero. We visit Ground Zero where there are protesters and lots of mixed emotions, as well as many cranes working on building around the site. Do some shopping at Century 21 department store and I get a shirt that doesn’t need ironing.

The downtown tour comes back around and we finish at mid town. We go for a look and work out how the Broadway cheap tickets work. We decide not to go back to the hotel, end up at TGI Fridays for a drink, then catch the night tour, after a brief drizzle time, but all good for the night tour. The guide said we had to be up stairs as we were from Australia which was so far away. Very few pics work as we seldom stop and never turn off the engine. Its a great night and we return back across the Manhattan bridge to mid town. The place is jumping because of Saturday night and everyone is out dressed to kill.