New York Day 1

We spent a lot of time on the tour busses each day. After a long ride we arrived in Battery Park for the ferry over to Liberty Island. After a grueling line through security we finally got the boat out to the island. We enjoyed a brisk walk around Lady Liberty.  We managed to complete our Jr. Ranger Books in record time. We got our badges and raced back to the ferry. We waved to Ellis Island but couldn’t stop since our tour was moving on. Lunch in downtown New York. We spent the afternoon at the 911 Memorial and museum. It was fascinating to learn about the buildings structures and what survived the terrorist attack. The new building frames the foundation of the old towers.We saw lots of ruins from the buildings. It was really scary to see all the photos and videos on the events unfolding. This was one of the firetrucks that was at ground zero. The iron in the building got so hot it just folded! The memorial outside was huge. They place flowers on the names of the people who died on their birthdays. The new tower next door is massive! The winged thing is the new transportation terminal. On the memorial each year the top opens to allow sun in for 86 minutes, the time it took from planes hijacked to towers falling. To decompress from all the heavy information we watched pigeons in the square outside. It was nice to see a little grass in all this concrete.