11th Jan: Man: This enormous woman will devour us all! Aah! [jumps into water]

Today we ate up free breakfast and made our way out onto the streets on New York.It was much busier today, being a workin' weekday. The streets were jammed with traffic gas, break and honking.

We set out to explore the lower isle of Manhattan. We mastered (to some degree) the subway. It was grimy in the way you'd imagine the subway to be. Upon entering, I walked past a suspicious large yellow puddle with a "caution wet floor" sign knocked over, and sprawled in the very puddle it was trying to protect people from. Made a transfer on the sub, and made our way to Battery Park. We wandered around, and tried to buy tickets to see inside the statue of liberties head. No luck, it is sold out - until late January. Using this knowledge we decided on catching the free Staten Island Ferry past the statue. This afforded a good view of the green machine. She was pretty magnificent. We did not linger on Staten Island, and caught the ferry straight back to admire liberty once again.

While in lower Manhattan we checked out the bowling green, with a famous charging bull statue - a monument to the bull market and Americas general economic success. Trinity Church and St Paul's Chapel which was where George Washinton went to worship (and still has a pew there) and where much of the 9/11 resuce effort was conducted. It was right across from Ground Zero. The chapel and ground zero were so incredibly moving, tears wanted to stream from my eyes, as I walked around the gaping hole in New York's skyline, read about the footprint of the two towers monument, and the stories and efforts of all those involved at the Church.
We walked along Wall Street, I waved at Mr Trump again as maybe he was chillin' in this building, as the other probs still had some protesters outside it.
We saw the stock exchange and ate some Maccas for lunch. It was the grandest McDonald's EVER! It has a pianist on the second story who played delightful melodies, and occasionally sung. We passed Federal Hall, where George Washington was inaugurated. It was mighty hard to get a photo of George, as every visitor wanted to pose triumphantly next him. I encouraged Sophie to do this too, and ruin other peoples humble photos. We admired City Hall and then stomped across Brooklyn Bridge with many other pilgrims. We however, unlike many made it the full way across the bridge into Brooklyn! We walked back and bought a few souvenirs. Had some starbucks, and then bought s'more flavoured poptarts and soup for dinner! Yum!