We watched the news all evening Saturday evening to see if the power would be restored to NYC. We had to get all the way down to Battery Park first thing in the morning for tickets on a ferry to see the Statue of Liberty. If the power wasn't restored we weren't quite sure how to get there in time if we had to walk or take a taxi.
Thankfully power was restored and some of the subways were running by the morning. But we still hit some hiccups in getting there. I have a memory of Stephen and I running "Amazing Race Style" to the ticket booths to make sure we were there in the time requested so we didn't miss our ferry. We did make it!
We got tickets that allowed us to walk around inside the statue to a point but not all the way up. We spent a bit of time in a museum of sorts that was near where we were dropped off. We picnic lunched on the island. We noticed a new museum being built at the other end of the island and wished we had time to go look at that too. It was a beautiful day!
After the Statue of Liberty, we went on over to Ellis Island. This was a really cool stop! An amazing museum that helped us have insight to what the process was like for those arriving here in America. We "rented" a computer for about an hour to look at passenger arrival lists and were able to find the record of Grandma Susan's grandpa William Stuplich.
Our next stop on a very full day was the 9/11 Museum. Wow. The reflection pools outside were beautiful and amazing.
Then we went inside. It's probably one of the best museums I've ever visited. They had this great app that downloaded to your phone allowed you to go on a self tour of the museum at your own pace. And we all went through at our own pace. We used our phones to share with the younger kids. I was with Lindsey. At one point there is this one part of the museum that is within the museum where there are more intense artifacts, recordings of the mayday calls, videos of the people jumping, etc.
Lindsey started in that area with me but then at some point she looked at me with big eyes and said she needed to leave. It was overwhelming her and she didn't want to see any more. So she and I (and Stephen sent Matthew with me too) hung out outside that area for awhile while we waited for the rest to see what they wanted to see.
We actually struck up a conversation with a nice woman named Bridgette who I recognized as a Dallas Temple worker. She was taking care of her granddaughter while the adults in her group also saw what they wanted to.
Our initial plan was to try and hit the Brooklyn Bridge and pizza at Grimaldi's for dinner but we were exhausted. These kids had been such troupers! It had been a full day. So we hit shake shack close to the hotel and went to bed.
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