This day would prove to be a huge one, full of new experiences, mostly good ones.
The first thing we did was walk to Central Park as we were so close to it. There we took a horse drawn carriage tour, which I know the locals don't think is a good thing for the animals, but not being locals of course we did it.
From there we proceeded to walk down Fifth Avenue to the Empire State Building, but the queue was so long to go up that we decided to keep going down to Battery Point to view the Statue of Liberty. It was during this walk that Myra had her purse stolen. There were so many people around, being a public holiday, that even though she saw the hand go into her bag (which unfortunately was open), there was nothing she could do about it. A hard lesson to learn, but in true Myra style she just got on with it and kept going, handbag closed.
After a walk off the beaten track to locate a post office we made it back to Fifth Avenue and down through Washington Square, Soho and Chinatown. By now we were all exhausted and so did the rest of the trip by subway down to Battery Point.
Of course once there we encountered more huge crowds, so instead of getting on a ferry to the Statue we just walked around the park instead.There were police everywhere, and we counted fourteen on our subway carriage, so we all felt pretty safe.
After looking around we got back on the subway to 67th Street and our hotel. Myra wanted to get off half way and have another go at getting up the Empire State Building, but we managed to talk her out of it!
That night we watched the dedication ceremony for the 200th anniversary of the Statue, which included speeches by Ronald and Nancy Reagen, Francois and Danielle Mitterand and various movie stars of the time. It ended with fireworks of course.
