Statue of Liberty

From what I am reading, we should take the Staten Island ferry to view the Statue of Liberty, take pix, etc. This will be more time efficient as the security lines for visiting the actual Statue are more than they are really worth, especially when we are pressed for time. We would spend nearly all day to see one site. We have no experience with mass transit, can someone explain the routing system? Or should we just do a hop on hop off bus?

Statue of Liberty

Here you go:

tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g60763-i5-k1118486鈥?/a>

Statue of Liberty

Routing system? What routing system? The question is much like asking ';what is the routing system of city streets?%26#39; The oldest parts of the subway system date to the 1870%26#39;s, while the newest stations were opened in the 1990%26#39;s. Obviously, there was never a single unified master plan that was put into place all at once, and intended to be useful for all time. As a general rule, with three exceptions, most subway lines start somewhere in a borough outside Manhattan, travel through Manhattan, and then ether terminate somewhere downtown (as the #1, the #6, and the E do) or else keep going on back across the river to another borough. If you want to see where the trains come from and where they go, you look at a map, of course.

Here is the map:

http://www.mta.info/nyct/maps/submap.htm

Do not forget that we also have buses, which go everywhere but are MUCH slower. Here is the Manahttan bus map:

http://www.mta.info/nyct/maps/manbus.pdf

A hop-on-hop-off bus is not intended to be a way of getting around town. It is instead a guided-tour sightseeing bus that follows a set route. It will be of no use to you whatsoever if you are not going in the same direction that it goes, and if you are not travelling at the hours they operate. Thre is also the not-inconsiderable fact that using a hop-on bus costs 25 times more than a subway ride. ($49 vs. $2)

When you combine bus and subway rdership, there are more fares paid daily on public transportation in New York City than there are people in the entire state of Wisconsin. You may be assured that most of these riders are not Nobel Prize winners, rocket scientists, ro brain surgeons. It does not take any special talent or intelligence to ride the subway successfully in NYC -- so go ahead and use the subway, you will do just fine.

For a quickie course in subway usage, you might want to read this thread:

tripadvisor.com/鈥?444514

I just found the subway very easy to navigate. And use the www. hopstop website. You can put in from address to address and they were correct directions. I Just printed them out and brought them with me.You can do subway, bus, and walking directions. (and taxi fare)The biggest thing to be sure is that you take the subway uptown or downtown depending on where you are going..Everything we went to was fairly close to a subway stop. If you use the hopstop site, also get a ';taxi fare'; quote as I found that sometimes, it was cheaper for 3 of us to take a cab. We bought the $7 all day pass, so if by chance you miss a stop, you can just jump back on. You can see the SOL pretty well, if you have a zoom can get great pics from the ferry. Its a nice ride and takes about an hour round trip. You can get off and immediately reboard the next ferry. Also good to know, everyone at the subway station is Sooooo helpful and will also tell you which trains to take. just ask

If you like American history, don%26#39;t write off the Statue Of Liberty and Ellis Island (the same boat takes you to both). Both are really wonderful if you like that type of thing, and the Status Of LIberty is also an engineering marvel. You can no longer go to the top, but the museum at the base explains how it was built in great detail (did you know the frame was designed by Gustav Eiffel -- yes, that Eiffel) and includes a full scale recreation of the face and of a foot

LivesInNewJersey:

Any thoughts on taking the ferry from Liberty State Park to SOL and Ellis Island? How are the security lines and wait time here versus taking the ferry from Battery Park?

We really want to see them both and have heard that the ferry line from Liberty State Park is considerably shorter.

Any thoughts...

Duce1:

It%26#39;s hard for me to compare as I haven%26#39;t left from Battery Park in several years, but I did it from LIberty State Park as recently as last summer. I would be surprised, though, if the number of people leaving from Liberty Park was as great as that from the Battery.

However, the real issue isn%26#39;t the line to get on the boat, it%26#39;s the line to make it through security at SOL. It%26#39;s the tightest security I%26#39;ve ever seen -- more so that at an airport. Every person goes through a chemical screening machine, you have to stand there for a few seconds as it ';puffs'; you. Since they only have a few machines, it takes a long time (the boats can hold hundreds of people)

If you%26#39;re in Manhattan to begin with I wouldn%26#39;t go to Jersey just to avoid the Battery, but if you%26#39;re driving up from Baltimore and just want to do SOL and Ellis Island, then definetely go to Liberty Park