I hate 7:00am. Woke up, show­ered, and had break­fast. We trav­elled to the sub­way to take it to the South Ferry. There was con­struc­tion going on the lines, so they were all messed up (espe­cially on the week­ends). We ended up tak­ing a shut­tle, too. Sub­ways are hot! (not in the “Paris Hilton” way, either).

First we went to Clin­ton Cas­tle to buy tick­ets. This used to be the 1^st stop for immi­grants going to Ellis Island. 1^st and 2^nd class pas­sen­gers usu­ally entered the United States from here. From this point we boated to Lib­erty Island. We got a lot of pic­tures at the seafront. A lot. Then we took a Lib­erty Tour with our Ranger. I took a pano­graph of the Statue, her­self, and hope to have it com­pleted soon. The same bird was walk­ing along the bot­tom of the statue and ended up in every­one of my pic­tures of the base. We also took a lot of pic­tures in front of the statue, and one behind.

For lunch we had pizza. Well, every­one ordered a pep­per­oni pizza and drink except me, who got a hot dog combo (what’s more Amer­i­can than a hot dog on Lib­erty Island?). At lunch it took me sev­eral min­utes to recall the word “pangea”, but I did it.

From here we went to Ellis Island, again by boat. I found the Statue to be inter­est­ing, but Ellis Island was fas­ci­nat­ing. I got caught up in the his­tory. We saw a movie on it, walked around, and then boated back to New York.

There’s a park area with lots of venders, and we hung around that for a while. sor’d Then we sought out Wall St. We found a bull (bronze) and the Canyon of Heros, which I really liked, even though it’s just the name of a street. But, to add to it, they put names and groups that were con­sid­ered heros into the side­walks down this street, and the build­ings all around really felt like an urban canyon. This brought us to the Stock Exchange, and the loca­tion where George Wash­ing­ton was sworn in.

From there we walked to Ground Zero. There is (obvi­ously) not much to see there. Of course, that is what there is to see. A space. A gap­ing hole in the fren­zied moun­tain­scape of build­ings. I didn’t real­ize at first that we were at Ground Zero, and I inad­ver­tently took a very poignant pic­ture of it. I art by accident!

Next was the Brook­lyn Bridge. We were sure that we had to take a sub­way to get there, but upon reen­ter­ing the tun­nels, we talked to a guy who told us that we were basi­cally under­neath the Brook­lyn Bridge right now. So, we exited the Sub­way, and lo!, there we were. On top we walked along for a while. You walk on this wooden walk­way over the roar­ing traf­fic. Holli was tired (I was, too) and her hips hurt, so we stopped before actu­ally get­ting under­neath any­thing, but Marissa stayed with us, and we talked about how the inher­ent dynam­ics of life lead one to believe that God does not, in fact, exist, while, at the same time, the sim­ple exis­tance of life and its dynam­ics do, in essense, require the exis­tance of God in some form.

We walked back to TGIFri­days, but they were closed. So, we walked to the sub­way, metro’d our way to home, and walked right up to an Apple­bees out of the subway.

On the way back I called a strange num­ber that had awaykened us last night, and I had thought it was Dirk, but it was actu­ally Collin. He has a kid on the way. CRAZY.

Time for bed.