Battery Park and Staten Island Ferry

Battery Park
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This morning we headed out bright and early, grabbed ourselves a take away coffee from Starbucks and headed down Broadway to the southern tip of Manhatten Island Battery Park. We walked through SoHo and browsed in some shops before finding a designer outlet store where Justin finally got a winter coat (even though today is a warm 12 degrees!) We went to the Ground Zero site which still looks pretty much the same to me as it did 2 years ago. I guess they've had to do lots of work to the foundadtion as there is a subway station underneath which is now up and running. The also have a temporary memorial plus plans for the memorial park and new buildings for the site. I also noticed that the scorched buildings on either side have now been repaired so it had less of a  desolate air about it but I'm sure once the park is there it will be very moving. They plan to have two huge square ponds in the "footprints"  of the twin towers. We continued down through the financial District to Battery park at the tip of the Island which is green and full of trees, squirrals and street vendors plus a huge line up for the ferry to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.

Lower Manhatten Skyline
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We wandered through looking at prints and watching an acrobatics group before bypassing the queue (and $20 ticket price) to Ellis Island. We instead headed to the Staten Island ferry and arrived just in time to board. The ride is free and takes you right past the Statue of Liberty plus it also gives you great views of the lower Manhatten skyline and the Brooklyn Bridge. After a relaxing hour round trip we caught the New York subway up to the Rockefellar centre and wandered down 5th ave and it's exclusive shops (mostly window shopping for us!), had a look in Trump towers and the xmas markets in a park just around from our hotel. We went back into Macys where I was in heaven in the xmas department and I even got a couple of decorations so it was all very exciting! We also went to the Manhatten mall, continued shopping and had a bite to eat before heading back to a relaxing bath at the hotel (for me anyway!) and bed by midnight.