Wednesday morning we drove straight into the city. (The night before we had gotten lost in a thunder storm trying to get back to our camp, they didn't give us directions for getting back.) Traffic was so bad that walking would have been faster, but we wouldn't have gotten the narrative. New York's finest (NYPD) was running traffic drills. All of a sudden you'd hear sirens and a whole line of squad cars would squeeze past the bus, pull to the curb and line up half on the sidewalk. Then the officers would get out and stand around. A few minutes later, they's get back in, turn on their sirens and take off down the street (very slowly due to traffic) only to line up somewhere else. 
I liked driving through the fashion district. We decided to skip going to the top of the Empire State Building and stopped at Ground Zero. It is humbling. There are still cranes and bulldozers working on the rubble. Some of the neighboring buildings have netting on their sides because they haven't been repaired yet.
Our next stop was Fort Clinton in Battery Park. There we bought tickets and boarded a ferry for the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Whereas we didn't have tickets to go inside the statue, we stayed on the ferry and got off at Ellis Island. I didn't realize how difficult it was for these immigrants. Doctors inspected 
them in what they called a six second physical. A chalk mark was put on their coat if they required further medical inspections and they were pulled aside. Often families had to wait around for days or weeks while someone was hospitalized or 
tested. Some people were sent back to their countries if they couldn't prove they could support themselves or if single women didn't have prospective husbands or families to pick them up.
After the ferry, we hopped into a taxi, another adventure in itself, and hurried (ha!) to the East Side to meet a friend of Harold's and mine for dinner. We ate at Sparks Steak House. It is a very elegant restaurant. Kind of old world, gentlemen's club. Being California tourists, we were very inappropriately dressed. Randy said "fuh-get-about-it, I know the owner". We also learned that "Big Paulie" a famous mob guy got whacked out in front of the restaurant. I googled it and it's true.
Next we walked back to the West Side and Times Square. Wow. The lights, the noise, the shops, it was awesome. We bought everyone various sized models of the Statue of Liberty and I Love NY T-shirts, so I'm sure you all can't wait. 
We only got lost twice getting back to the camp, but we hadn't seen Queens anyway.
Great post mom! I loved that you googled the mob story to be sure that it was true! You are a technology rockstar! Love reading about the adventures!
Posted by: Heidi Thompson | July 24, 2006 at 11:58 AM