Tourism and Thanksgiving in NYC

Another day in NYC and it was time for what I was most looking forward to:  visiting the Statue of Liberty.  Excited, we lined up in a queue in the freezing cold to catch the boat across.

The Merchant Navy had a memorial statue on the pier which was a bit jarring - I imagine it's worse at high tide.

As an aside, our entire trip to the US was a nightmare of security - luckily we didn't get asked to go through the backscatter machines at the airport or there would have been a scene.  As it was, taking your shoes, belt and coat off every time you go through a machine as well as taking your laptop out was just ridiculous and turned the entire security process into a three-ring-circus of undressing and redressing yourself on cue.  Land of the free?  More like the Land-where-you're-treated-like-a-criminal-at-every-turn-but-you-have-no-right-to-object.  After going through the security to get onto the boat to Liberty Island, I saw the following quote on the wall:  "Where liberty is, there is my country." - Benjamin Franklin.  Oh the irony.

Security circus over, we caught the boat over to the island.  I was actually quite disappointed by the statue itself - it was much smaller than I thought it was.

The view from the island back to the city was saddening considering the difference between what we saw and the obviously pre-9/11 photo on the tourist board.  The Twin Towers looked impressive in the photos, and I wish I could have seen them in person.

We wandered around looking for the NYC Flatiron Building (they have one in Toronto too), and spent around 5 minutes trying to work out if we were looking at the right building or the book was wrong - until we realised that we were looking at the wrong side.  From this angle, it's much more obvious :)

The next day was American Thanksgiving.  We got up early to see the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade - it started at 9am, and we turned up at 8am to find a sea of people.

Giant balloons!  The good balloon handlers could make the balloons wave at the crowd!

The entire parade was very stereotypically American - marching bands, cheerleaders and flag-wavers, and the balloons were obvious marketing ploys by any company that could sell to children.

It wouldn't be New York City without Spiderman!

Santa finally arrived to finish the parade - by which time we were freezing cold and happy to run back to our warm hotel room before heading out again for a delicious Thanksgiving Lunch of turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed potato and mashed sweet potato and beans... with some apple pie for dessert of course.

On our last day we headed to the American Museum of Natural History in the few hours we had before heading to the airport.  The dinosaurs were pretty cool!

The dinosaur makes even Stephen look small!  

And with that it was time to hop back on the plane.  I was actually pretty disappointed with New York to tell the truth - perhaps it was that everyone had built it up to be a magical playground of awesomeness, but nothing really seemed as shiny as it was made out to be.  That said, Stephen liked it and is keen to go back.  

We arrived back in Toronto to -1 with an apparent temperature of -8, and some snow flurries - lucky we bought those warm coats in NYC!  I was very jealous to hear that they've had an absolute dump on the west coast (damn you Liz!) while we're still hanging out for something that will stick the ground.  Hopefully we'll get it soon!