16 May 2007
Day 2…The Adventure Continues
5:45 a.m. wakeup calls were harsh this morning…and most of us were walking a bit slower from yesterday (some slower than others because they didn’t listen to the “new shoes in New York are not a good idea” advice. 
).
But were were up and at ‘em and on the bus by 7:30 this morning. Our first stop was Battery Park and the Circle Line Ferry to Ellis Island. We arrived early enough that we were through security and on the 10 a.m. ferry.
We didn’t get off at the Statue of Liberty, but we did have excellent views of it.
We got off the boat at Ellis Island and spent the rest of the morning exploring there.
In this hall could be as many as 5,000 immigrants each day.
People would wait and hope that they weren’t one of the 10% of immigrants not allowed to enter the United States.
Back on the bus, we headed to Ground Zero. On the way, we passed this piece of art, which used to sit between the Twin Towers. It was a gold sphere. After 9/11, they found the pieces and put it back together:
Rescue workers found these steel beams like this in the wreckage after 9/11. This now stands on Canal Street near Ground Zero:
Also at Ground Zero is a 9/11 museum. These are thousands of paper cranes made by Japanese school children and given to the city of New York as a symbol of hope. They hang over a stairwell in the museum:
Around 2, we were ready to see some sights from the bus, so our tour guide, Zora, showed us the sights around Wall Street, then we headed up toward SoHo (which we learned is short for south of Houston (pronounced HOW-ston)), Chinatown and Little Italy.
We had a couple of hours to shop in those areas until we met for dinner at Puglia’s in Little Italy. While we were finishing eating their resident accordian player came out and gave us a little show, and we sang along (some even danced!).
Quick change of clothes and we were headed to our Broadway stop – 7 p.m. Beauty and the Beast.
We get to sleep in a bit tomorrow…and we’ll be headed home in the afternoon.
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Man, it looks like you guys are having a blast! I’m jealous!
The trip looks amazing! You guys truly did the whole New York experience – you’re going to need a vacation to recover from your trip!
One of my favorite parts of the trip was the ‘Sing Along’ with the accordion player at Puglia’s with a real live dancer!
Another highlight was watching two of our chaperone’s riding a horse!
I won’t mention names, as we all promised “What goes on in NYC, stays in NYC!”.
MS. Keefe, Thank you so much for putting all this together. It was so wonderful to be able to participate in this trip. You worked very hard. I think everything about this trip was wonderful! Broadway was probably my favorite. I will never forget the the comments from the kids when we were pulling into the school parking lot and they wanted to keep driving and not let this trip end. They truly had a great time! It was a very special time and very memorable. This was really a great group of kids (and adults).