Tuesday, October 20, 2009 Liberty Harbor Marina & RV Park, Jersey City, NJ

We had to set the alarm for the first time since we’ve been out in order to get up and be ready for the bus to pick us up for our New York City tour. The bus came right to the campground and picked us up (five couples), then went to 3 or 4 hotels to pick up additional people, then went thought the Lincoln tunnel into New York City and picked up our tour guide, Robert. This tour guide was excellent. With a rich baritone voice, he described each point of interest and pointed out many large apartment buildings where well known people lived. He was extremely knowledgeable and seemed to deeply love this city.

We stopped for a short walk in Central Park,

went past the Empire State Building, Times Square, Trump Tower, and went into St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Rockefeller Center

and Grand Central Terminal. He showed us where the Today show tapes at the NBC studio and we also went by the CBS, ABC and MTV studios. We drove thru some of the Wall St. area and stopped to view the World Trade Center Site (Ground Zero). We then came back to the New Jersey side to catch the ferry to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.


While we were touring through the downtown area, there were several areas where there were many NYC police (probably 50-60 at each area). The President was supposed to be here this afternoon and tonight, so apparently they were preparing for him. Anyway, that caused some delays for our tour. Also at one of the stops, one group of women didn’t show up at the appointed time, so the tour guide had to go back and look for them causing a delay of several minutes. So when we arrived at the Statue of Liberty, we were too late to go inside the Statue or even the museum at the base. We were able to walk around the outside, and of course, go into the gift store, but that was all. By then, most of us were too tired to have walked up all the steps into the Statue anyway. (I guess the delay actually saved me, otherwise Larry would have been headed up all those steps – with me in tow.) We arrived back at the park around 5:00 this evening. Now we’re in for the evening and planning to head back into the city sometime tomorrow morning.