Liberty Island State Park

On day #3 of my nieces’ visit we went to Liberty Island State Park.

Late morning on Monday we headed onto the I78 and made our way through some not so nice looking neighborhoods around the park to get to the Liberty Island State Park. Why we went there and not to NYC? Well, when I visited the city last fall I saw the queue at Battery Park waiting in line to get onto a boat to be shipped to Ellis Island and Liberty Island. And that queue was at least a mile long, I am not kidding! So, in order to avoid that we looked for another way to get to Liberty Island to have a close look at the Statue of Liberty. And we found it by taking the boat from the New Jersey side of things. The Liberty Island State Park. It was great. No queue at all, friendly staff at the cashier and information desk and on the boat. We boarded the boat that left at 11.30, had a short stop at Ellis Island, but did not get off, and got to Liberty Island shortly after. Of course, all the way we took in the great view of Manhattan skyline and of Lady Liberty getting closer into view by the minute. Until we were standing right underneath her. Along with a few hundred other tourists. It was really hard to dodge all those people taking photos of friends/relatives posing in front of the statue for a photo – in the end I gave up and just went through the crowd with a few murmured excuses. Sorry, there was just no way (literally). But it was really nice to see the Statue of Liberty for real and up close. However, we did not stay long, the interior is currently closed due to restoration. We headed back with the boat to New Jersey and got there around 2 pm. Which we kind of figured a little too late to go on to New York City. So, instead we headed back to Morris County and grabbed yummy sandwich from Panera Bread, which we ate sitting on a bench in The Morristown Green. It was such lovely weather! Afterwards we went for a nice walk around Morristown. I thought I would show my nieces small(er) town America and they seemed to enjoy it very much. Admiring the nice architecture in the back roads and the hustle and bustle around The Green. Morristown really is a nice town.

And that concluded our Monday. Oh, actually, David and I introduced Sonja and Sandra to …. homemade fajitas in the evening – what a feast – afterwards watched an old episode of Serenity, which Sonja was curious about, while Sandra did some studying for university. But then we really called it at day. Because the next day, we were going to go to New York City.