Trip to New York With Gwen September 2007
We are beginning our second full day here in New York at the Affinia hotel by Penn Station. We’ve had to scale back on our planned activities. Some was caused due to time delays getting here (fog in Milwaukee and apparently lots of other places in the Midwest, too). Other cutbacks due to running out of steam and the fact that things just seem to take longer than we anticipated. But let's focus on what we DID do. Yesterday (Friday), we went on the Circle Line Tour to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. We had to go through a complete security check (very similar to what you do at the airport now) BOTH at the ferry dock, and again at Liberty Island to get inside the statue. For Gwen, this included a hand search and swabbing of her hydration backpack. At the Statue of Liberty, they also ran us through the "puffer" which I guess checks for explosives, drugs or both. I had quite mixed emotions at the Statue Tour, with the irony of the whole situation not being lost on me....