Down In Brooklyn

This morning had yet another long commute, the second out of many to come, except we left a bit later today and, shockingly, arrived at our station later. We took our train down to Hoboken today instead of switching over to go to Penn and we took the PATH subway over to Manhattan. It went straight to the World Trade Centre, so that’s where we got off. The new train station over there is very white and is supposed to look like someone folding their fingers together. It has gone a few billion dollars over budget

and it’s still not finished, so you know, slightly expensive. We went right over to Battery Park to try and catch the hop on hop off boat to Brooklyn. We got there just as the boat was beginning to be loaded. Our tour guide was quite good, but I didn’t hear everything he said because I spent most of the ride out on the front where it was windy. We went under both the Manhattan Bridge and the Brooklyn Bridge. Apparently, when the Brooklyn Bridge was built, people loved walking on it until one day when it was quite windy and the bridge was rocking on it’s suspensions. After that, the population refused to use the bridge again until the architect who built it walked an elephant across it to prove it was stable. Good times. When we

got to Brooklyn, we had a hard time finding the hop on hop off bus stop and Mum started to freak out a bit. Gee that’s abnormal. In the end, we found the bus thanks to my supreme map reading skills. We got on and then Mum was very pissed off by the fact that the bus made a complimentary stop at the ferry dock, even though it wasn’t marked on the map, so we could have technically stayed where we were and not wandered around aimlessly. The speakers and the earphones weren’t working so the tour guide had to yell out facts at us over the sound of traffic. He did a good job, but it was still hard to hear him at times. When we started off the tour, a school group was walking along the

sidewalk and one kid decided to wave to the bus. I was the only one who waved back and that’s the story of how I made a friend in Brooklyn. Along the tour we saw Al Capone’s first house, the one where he was raised. We stopped at the Brooklyn Library and actually got a chance to get off and go inside because the tour guide was nice like that. We saw The Soldier’s and Sailor’s Arch, which is a memorial for the soldiers of the Union from 1861-1865. On the way back across to Manhattan, we took the Manhattan Bridge, wince

the Brooklyn Bridge had been declared a historical landmark and cannot support the weight of those big double decker buses. after the tour we decided to go see if we could catch the ferry over to Liberty Island and Ellis Island to see the Statue of Liberty and the landing site of all immigrants to New York from the 1600s to the 1900s. Unfortunately the last boat had already left so we decided to do it another day. Instead, we got back on the hop on hop off boat to take the entire tour. The first part we had already done, but it took us past the Statue of Liberty. The boat took us most of the way around the island of Manhattan until we got close to Times Square. Then, they had shuttle buses ready to take us the rest of the way to the square before we got off and walked back to Penn Station. It was another long day, all though not quite as long as yesterday. Peace out m8s.

#camping #newyork #newyorkcity