New York #2

Day 3 & we woke to lovely sunshine again, albeit a bit cooler than the day before.  Today we'd earmarked for visiting the 9/11 memorial gardens & the Statue of Liberty so we hopped on the subway just by the hotel & a after short 8 minute ride, we emerged into the sunlight at the foot of the Freedom Tower.

The memorial fountains are beautiful but I really struggled with my emotions when I was there.  I'll admit that there were quite a few tears shed & generally, most people felt the same judging by the complete silence all around.  Most definitely a place for reflection.  Because of this, we chose not to go in to the actual museum, I'd have been a complete wreck!

From here, we walked by the river down to the ferry terminal & headed over to see Lady Liberty.  I love this ferry journey seeing the Manhattan skyline behind you & the imposing statue in front of you, just fabulous!

We wandered round the island & had a bit of lunch (with THE best deli sandwich FYI!!!) then caught the ferry back to the city where, after watching helicopters circling above all morning, we decided on a whim to try & find them & do a heli tour!  We pretty much just followed the helicopters & we eventually found the helipad right next to the Brooklyn Bridge.  After paying an extortionate amount (still makes me feel slightly sick thinking how much!!) & waiting an hour, our turn was up.  At this point I was extremely nervous about the whole thing & very nearly backed out but omg, I'm so glad I didn't!!  I absolutely loved it & it was definitely the highlight of our trip for me - and hubble would agree with that too!

After landing, we caught the subway up to Chinatown & had a mooch around & then the subway back to the hotel.  It was 5pm at this point & we were starving so we hopped into a diner & had a wee pig-out.  That night was spent doing a bit of shopping for the kids & we really had run out of steam at this point!  But I have to point out here that shopping for myself was verrrrry disappointing!! :'(  A lot of things on my 'list' were out of stock (this was in 4 different Sephora stores!) & I did see a few nice things - but they were cheaper in the UK so I left them!!)  I ended up with a few bits & pieces which I'll do in another post asap.

On our last morning we woke to torrential downpours that were already flooding the roads at 7am!  We were meeting my cousin & his wife who were in NY from California for breakfast so after a great catch-up with them, we headed back to the room to pack the suitcases before heading out one last time.  Within 10 minutes we were both absolutely soaked to the skin & frozen so that put a bit of a dampener of things but we still managed to do a few more shops!!

And then that was it, our trip to NY was over & we were in a very smelly, overheated cab heading back to JFK!!  It's really surreal that this trip we had been planning for soooo long is over - but on the upside, we're now planning a trip to Rome for next June to celebrate what will be our 20th wedding anniversary, yay!!!

Here's the last of my photos for you!