Day 7 Thursday - What do you do when you check into a 2 room suite (at 3am planning to sleep late the next morning), at the very end of the corridor which makes you anticipate that there will be less noise and you are woken up to a pattern of hammering at 8:30am? For a chain like Sheraton our reaction was one of disbelief. We were rudely woken by this stead tic-tack-toe that had a rhythm when you are woken up from your slumber :) Seems they were renovating the place and when we called up asking them to stop, they readily complied. Only to renew it at 10am which Somnath claims was not rhythmic any more ;-) Anyway, it felt a little silly to complain about the noise at 10am and we started the day. Our destination - Statue of Liberty.
Made a wrong turn as we headed out of our hotel and while we were pondering about how to make a U turn, an off duty cop(looked like a cop..who knows :)) pulled up next to our car and informed us that we were definitely offtrack cos we were headed towards a state prison ;-) Ha ha..he was nice and friendly and pointed us in the right direction to get onto the freeway and we were off to see Madam Liberty.
We bought tickets for the ferry(actually wanted to buy an audio tour ticket but the granny at the counter sternly told me 'You dont need an audio tour..just follow the Park warden'. She did save us $6 each but we found it quite funny :) We took the ferry that dropped us off at Ellis island and we toured the museum. A bit of historical background - All the immigrants to the US were dropped off at this island where they were examined for contagious diseases, extreme poverty and their linguistic skills. Anything that would convince the govt that they would not be dependent on the state for support. Interestingly, most of the pictures spoke about the 'outdated practices' like asking 'how much money do you have?', 'what are you here for?', 'what skills do you have?' to the immigrants which we noted are still some questions asked when we apply for visas now :-)) Things havent changed that much. We then watched a short movie at the museum theatre and then caught the ferry onto Liberty island. You can go inside the statue if you reserve a trip or if you are at the island b/w 8am and 10am which we didnt know. So we had to make do with exploring the island and clicking Madam Liberty's pictures from outside(which come to think of it really matters isnt it? ;-)) The statue of liberty must have been a really welcome sight to the immigrants from the European nations who were fleeing the Nazis, communism and wars...a symbol of 'freedom' something that we take for granted most of the times.
But the lady at the counter was right..you dont really need an audio tour :) Finished off our tour, dropped our car(it was a weekly rental) at the Newark airport and picked up a two day rental for our trip to Boston and started driving towards Boston.
Made a wrong turn as we headed out of our hotel and while we were pondering about how to make a U turn, an off duty cop(looked like a cop..who knows :)) pulled up next to our car and informed us that we were definitely offtrack cos we were headed towards a state prison ;-) Ha ha..he was nice and friendly and pointed us in the right direction to get onto the freeway and we were off to see Madam Liberty.
We bought tickets for the ferry(actually wanted to buy an audio tour ticket but the granny at the counter sternly told me 'You dont need an audio tour..just follow the Park warden'. She did save us $6 each but we found it quite funny :) We took the ferry that dropped us off at Ellis island and we toured the museum. A bit of historical background - All the immigrants to the US were dropped off at this island where they were examined for contagious diseases, extreme poverty and their linguistic skills. Anything that would convince the govt that they would not be dependent on the state for support. Interestingly, most of the pictures spoke about the 'outdated practices' like asking 'how much money do you have?', 'what are you here for?', 'what skills do you have?' to the immigrants which we noted are still some questions asked when we apply for visas now :-)) Things havent changed that much. We then watched a short movie at the museum theatre and then caught the ferry onto Liberty island. You can go inside the statue if you reserve a trip or if you are at the island b/w 8am and 10am which we didnt know. So we had to make do with exploring the island and clicking Madam Liberty's pictures from outside(which come to think of it really matters isnt it? ;-)) The statue of liberty must have been a really welcome sight to the immigrants from the European nations who were fleeing the Nazis, communism and wars...a symbol of 'freedom' something that we take for granted most of the times.
But the lady at the counter was right..you dont really need an audio tour :) Finished off our tour, dropped our car(it was a weekly rental) at the Newark airport and picked up a two day rental for our trip to Boston and started driving towards Boston.