New York: Sunday

We knew that Sunday was going to be pretty much wall-to-wall rain all day (typical; last weekend in New York it was 80˚and sunny) so we planned some indoor stuff for Sunday - and Monday...

First we took the subway down to South Ferry. Actually, first we went back for $3 pancakes, then we took the subway down to South Ferry. Another day, another event going on in New York - yesterday it was the Revlon 5k, today it was the Five Borough Bike Tour. Rather them than me in the pouring rain...

The boat that leaves Battery Park goes first to the Statue of Liberty and then to Ellis Island, then returns to Battery Park. We decided not to get off the boat at the Statue, because once you're that close, you can't see it any more. And they won't let you go up the statue at the moment, so we stayed on the boat and went straight to the Immigration Museum at Ellis Island. I found it really interesting - I guess it would have been even more interesting if I had actually had relatives who'd landed there; I could have looked them up. But I find 3D representations of statistics fascinating (no, seriously, I do - remember the world cities exhibition at Tate Modern?), so I was in my element looking at all the different ways of representing immigration, language growth and decline, population change etc. Fine, laugh all you want; I liked it.

It was pouring down while we were on the boat back to Battery Park and the rain was bouncing off the ground while we walked from there to the Winter Garden at Ground Zero, so we were pleased to get inside and dry off for a while. We had a look round Banana Republic (there was a sale on!) then went to a Chinese restaurant for a late lunch. Then we caught the subway up to Bloomingdales and used our New York Pass discount on some Little Brown Bags and a necklace for Jen (but there really wasn't much else worth spending our money on), then we had a quick look inside St Patrick's Cathedral on the way down to Grand Central Terminal, which was beautiful, as ever. Jen's poor feet were killing her by then, though, so we walked back to the hotel for a quick lie down.

We all fell asleep and Jen and I had real difficulty getting up again at 21:00, but we finally managed to drag ourselves out of bed and walk over to 30 Rockefeller Plaza to the 'Top of the Rock' observation deck on floor 67 for a view of Manhattan at night. It was raining - still - so we couldn't see all that far, but the views were still pretty spectacular - and well worth getting out of bed for!