The Statue of Liberty

In celebration of our boy's first day of Kindergarten we visited the Statue of Liberty yesterday, it was the first time for both Frank and the kids and I had not been out to see her for years, so spirits were high. The ride on the boat from the tip of downtown Manhattan, out to Liberty island was one of the most exciting parts of the journey.

During our everyday lives in Brooklyn we often see the statue from afar out in the NY harbor, we can see her from our super market, from the elevated train on the way into Manhattan, driving on a few of the hilly streets near our home and of course from the bridges. The kids are always excited to catch a glimpse of her, so they were thrilled to be able to finally see her up close.

They seemed surprised by her actual size, so impressive and grand when you are right there. I had made reservations far in advance for us to go inside the pedestal of the statue where they have a museum about the statue's history and actual size casts of her face and feet (fun for the little ones!).

We also had reservations to walk up to the base of the statue at the top of the pedestal, which was a long walk up for kids, equivalent to walking up about 6 or 7 stories in an apartment building, but they did really well. The observation deck was very small even though you could walk all the way around the statue with amazing views of New York all around. Magnificent!

I was pretty freaked out being up so high with just a wall and no guard rail with the kids. You can still walk up to the crown of the statue, which I remember doing as a child, but now there is an age limit on that and it requires a special reservation. The security for the whole statue is very high these days, we had to go through airport style security twice to get in.

One of my favorite things was a small detail that I noticed as we descended, the statue is made of Copper which has oxidized, giving her that amazing turquoise glow...and the copper must be eroding down the base as you can see it running down the edges of the huge stones of the pedestal, so beautiful...

It was good to have our feet back on the ground and the kids loved running around the huge grassy areas that are planted around the island, and of course the boat trip back to Manhattan was another highlight, well worth the trip with all of the late summer tourists.