a new york sunday

for our first sunday in new york, our awesome, gracious hosts--my ate ianne and her husband manong rey--had a pretty busy day planned.

we started the day early, driving to manhattan from long island. we did a quick drive around queens, so we could see this:

Jollibee in Queens

we were supposed to go to the ferry terminals and hit liberty island, but when manong told us that he used to work on roosevelt island, we begged for a detour.

Manhattan from Roosevelt Island

there wasn't much to the island, though, but we managed to get a few photos of ourselves ovar there.

I don't know what we were talking about.

Me with Ate Ianne

The little boy squeezing in some play time.

then it was off to battery park, on to the ferry to liberty island and ellis island. susie and i usually traveled without other people, so we hardly have any photos of the two of us together on our trips. i gotta say, it's great to finally have some vacation photos, like this one, taken as the ferry was leaving the station:

It was a windy day.

on liberty island, we finally saw this lady up close:

we got rained on, though, so we got back on the ferry to visit ellis island, which used to be the gateway to the united states, where millions of immigrants tried their luck to live the american dream.

The Immigration Station

going through the halls of the immigration station gave me a heavy feeling, and no wonder, as the building was where millions of hopefuls were examined, interviewed, at times detained, or even deported. you can really feel all the history that went on in this building.

we made our way back to manhattan, where we saw the charging bull, the symbol of wall street, or more accurately, of "aggressive financial optimism and prosperity." of course, i couldn't resist having my photo taken with the famous beast:

I was trying to tame it.

after a whole lot of walking, we eventually ended up at the mouth of brooklyn bridge. before walking the length of it, we got some waffles and tried to muster up enough energy to cross the darned bridge together. our reward? yet another "honeymoon" photo: 

Alriiight.

over on the other side of the bridge, we decided to soothe our tired muscles by sitting back and having some gelato at the brooklyn bridge park.

Gelato, on a very windy night.
So what if we freeze our lips off? It's yummy!

we then looked for the train that would take us back to where we parked the car. but before heading back to long island, we had to stop by tito rad's for dinner. why? because they serve this:

Tuna panga.

which is to say, i was never far from home when we were in new york. :)