Today we will be having a city tour of New York. Firstly, we went to Battery Park, where we boarded a cruise ship to Liberty Island to view the Statue of Liberty. We had to go through a tight security check (similar to that in airports) before boarding the cruise. Our tour guide gave us some time to take photos of the Statue of Liberty and to have an early lunch at the food court.
After lunch, we took the cruise ship back to Battery Park. We then took a short walk to the nearby Wall Street/New York Stock Exchange/Empire State Building/Trinity Church. We were surprised to find that a portion of the road at Wall Street has been closed off and there were many police on standby. Our guide explained that there was probably a protest/demonstration nearby. True enough, we saw people holding posters and banners on another street while walking back to our coach. Luckily they seemed to have just started so we were able to make our way to our coach without problems.
The coach then drove us to Times Square, where we were given some time to walk around. This is the place where people gathered for New Year countdown. There were many large LCD screens showing various advertisements and I liked a particular one where it interacted with the crowd. After walking around for a while, we went back to the coach and headed to Fifth Ave. This was somewhat similar to Orchard Road, where there were many branded shops. We passed by the Apple store and saw quite a number of people paying tributes to Steve Jobs, who had just passed away the day before. There was also a long queue outside Abercrombie and Fitch and I believe it would be the same when it opens in Singapore later.
After that, we went to a Chinese restaurant for dinner. By then, I was feeling rather sleepy, probably because of jet lag (even though I had slept quite a lot :P). We had a quick dinner before returning to the hotel to rest for the night.
