Tuesday's Treasure

The treasure I am sharing with you today are a few pictures of our Memorial Day weekend "mini-vacation" we took to NJ/NYC.

It only took about 2 hours to get from our home in the suburbs of Albany to Newark, NJ.
However, the traffic was a nightmare. And we left early, around 3 pm.
I do not like driving in NJ.....nor do I really like staying there. But, we wanted a hotel suite and it was more affordable there than in Manhattan!
Here are Dave and Courtney, waiting for our pizza dinner to arrive, hanging out in the living room area of our suite. I highly recommend the Springhill Suites of Marriot. Great hotel, great service, awesome amenities.

We got to the Liberty State Park (NJ) early Sat. a.m. It is only about 15 min from our hotel.
This is Courtney and Claire looking at the large sandcastle display in the Ferry terminal. We had already purchased our ferry tickets online so had plenty of time to look around before getting in the security check line to board the ferry to Ellis Island.

Here, Courtney and Claire are looking at a large globe in the Ellis Island Museum. It shows the various passage routes that immigrants took to get to our country. If you have never been here this makes a great field trip for your children. I do not recommend it for children younger than 8.

And of course once we were done on Ellis Island, we took the ferry over to Liberty Island National Park. We have been recording every National Park and National Forest we tour or hike in so the girls were very excited to finally be in visiting one in the NYC area.
The Statue of Liberty is truly a place that each American should visit at least once in their life-time. Do it with your children before they leave for college. It doesn't cost a dime to tour. You do need to acquire a Monument Pass which you can get on-line if you purchase a Statue Cruise ticket (ferry). They only give out a certain number of passes per day so get them online to be safe! And expect to wait in line to actually get inside the statue....we waited about 45 min to get through security and that was after waiting about 20 min. outside. Again, not a place for the very young. I did see toddlers there but....their parents had trouble keeping them occupied. I highly recommend this for children ages 7 and older.

So....do you have a special treasure to share today? What about a task?
My task for the day is to prepare an early dinner (Dave has a softball game tonite), get Claire to her ballet rehearsal, then jet home, help Claire change, and get the girls over to the high school for Courtney's Spring (orchestra) Concert. This all has to be done between 4: 45 and 7 pm ! (without the help of my mate!)

Enjoy your day!