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Today we made it to The Statue! Thank God we didn't go yesterday though. I'll explain:
Theoretically, getting to Liberty Island is fairly simple, by taking the Number 1 Metro to "Battery Park", which is the last station on Lower Manhattan. From there, you buy a ferry ticket and hop on to the ferries that run every 30 minutes to the island. Easy right?
We left the hotel about 11ish, and walked to a different subway station that is a bit further from the hotel but is on the Number 1 line. We had a quick breakfast there (Starbucks in America is crap also, just like everywhere else), and got on to the train to Battery Park.
On the train there was a notice saying that you needed to be in the first 5 cars if you wanted to get off at Battery Park, so we had to change cars en route.

When we got to Battery Park, it was fairly simple finding the ferry, and the HUGE queue that was waiting to get on board!! We started to queue and then someone told us that we had to get tickets first, so we went to the ticket booths (small queue there) and got our tickets, then queued again.
The queue moved fairly fast, until we reached this big tent-like thing, where there were security guards and metal detectors and x-ray scanners! And, just like airports, we had to have our stuff scanned and pockets emptied etc. It turns out that since September the 11th, security at national monuments had become very strict.

After that we waited for the passengers on the ferry to disembark, then we got on. We sat on the top deck and I instantly felt sick! It's odd, cos I've never had sea-sickness before, and I'm ok on river boats and theme park rides etc. I spent the 15 minute trip looking at the floor :(

We took a look around the island and the statue which is very impressive. It's huge and is very detailed, and it felt great seeing something that you'd read and heard so much about before.
The Gorillapod that Kelly gave me last christmas really helped today, because I used it to set up the camera on the floor in front of us, and I set the camera to remote control capture. Once I'd gotten the right angle, I sat next to Kelly and just pressed the remote control button, which takes a picture after 2 seconds! It was really useful and lets you take pictures of yourself exactly as you want them, without having to ask people to do it for you etc. The site of the camera and pod also intrigued quite a few people :)

We then had to take the ferry (long queue again!) to Ellis Island (Immigration Museum), and waited for people to get on and off there, then back to NY. We got back to Battery Park at 15:45!

So, what should be a fairly simple thing was actually nearly a whole day's worth of queuing and traveling, because of the huge number of visitors to the statue and security.

After that we went to Little Italy, which was basically a single (but fairly lengthy) street with restaurants galore. Surprisingly, it took us ages to find one of the rarest Italian dishes we wanted to have that day, PIZZA! Yes, in Little Italy it's nearly impossible to have a pizza. The majority of restaurants serve pasta, pollo etc etc. No pizza.
Eventually, we found a place that sold pizza (El Picollo Buffalo or something like that). We ordered some starters (Stuffed Mushrooms for Kelly, Fried Calamari for me), and 2 large pizzas for us to share. The menu had 2 sizes of pizza, and this is exactly how they were described: Small - 4 slices, Large 8 slices. We thought that small would be like Pizza Hut small, and the large 8 slices sounded reasonable.
We should have guessed from the surprised tone in the voice of the waitress that this was what we had gotten ourselves in to:

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They damn things were huge! We managed to eat a half of each one, and took the rest in a box, which we got bored of carrying so we tried to give it to the first poor person we saw. He refused it cos it wasn't hot (no joke!).

After that we wandered to SoHo, which was full of hippy kind of shops (ever heard of The Yellow Rat Bastard? me neither). Didn't really see anything nice there, and it was quite hot and we were getting really tired, so we headed back to Times Square and went to Jamba Juice for a quick, refreshing, and again really big, fruit smoothie. I had Mango-a-go-go and Kelly had Caribbean Passion.

And that was that. Our NYC trip is nearly over, with only tomorrow left that we've dedicated to a big Macy's shopping spree, and an even bigger dinner at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. Maybe a cheese cake at Junior's and a cocktail at Dave & Busters as a goodbye ;)

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