harryfat1

We made it back to the Midtown area via the subway. The original plan was to go to Flushing Queens to see the largest Chinatown in the US/Canada region but that doesn’t seem feasible in this pouring rain. Instead, we just grabbed another bento box from the Japanese store one block from the subway exit and that would be our dinner. Nobody was in the mood to walk outside in the pouring rain/wet shoes to do more sightseeing for the night. Oh, well, such is life when traveling. When you do the planning at home in perfect 72 degrees weather, you never factor in potential bad weather in your aggressive itinerary as you want to see this and that and that. But the real world has rain/heat that deters you from doing everything on the list. The total distance walked today was only 5 miles as the day was cut short by the rain. This concludes day 5 of the trip report as we have past the half way mark of the trip

By the time we docked, it was really pouring when we got back to Manhattan. God Bless the enterprising folks in NYC since they can’t sell any hats during the rain, they tried selling ponchos to tourists as they got off the boat and totally drenched if they had no rain gear. When life hands you a lemon, you make lemonade, right? Yeah, it’s rainy pretty hard Not many people stop for fruit in this pouring rain A lot of people bought the ponchos

One World In case you don’t know it, it’s rainy outside from the window as the Celebrity ship made a 180-degree turn and headed out to the open sea after a brief Statue of Liberty viewing

This being a cruise ship forum, let’s try to include some cruise content periodically. As our ferry headed back to Manhattan in the rain, we saw the Celebrity cruise ship sail out and instead of heading straight for the open waters, she was able to sail in front of the Statue of Liberty and all the passengers got a great frontal view. From the comments a few months ago, supposedly this is a rare occurrence as the large cruise ships sailing southward out of NJ typically do not come up north and see the statue up close. For whatever reason/luck, this cruise sailing was able to see the Statue prior to leaving town. From our ferry, it’s as if we are on a tender from ashore going back to the cruise ship for the day. FRONTAL VIEW of the Statue from 120 feet up above water. How cool is that?

Check out the dark clouds hovering over the Statue of Liberty area

Now this wouldn’t be a Cheapo Dad’s trip report (supplemental or not) if there wasn’t a Line picture in here somewhere. Granted it’s not the big massive lines that tie up cruise ships but I have never stood next to someone pulling up the lines either. The dude was thinking to himself this dumb tourist takes pictures of EVERYTHING. He must be from a Hicksville area like California that has never been on a ferry before to take a picture of a rope...

All done with Ellis Island and time to catch the next ferry as we walked out at 4:20 (think they close by 5 PM) and guess what – RAIN. Dang. Time to break out the umbrella as we didn’t get lucky after all in missing the pending storm. Coming from California, we are not used to rain in the summer. We only get rain from November through April. Summer rains are not something you would see in CA. Maybe out in the deserts of NV/AZ, you will get some periodic flash floods but regular summer rains are a different experience for us. This is the 3rd rain incident since we arrived. Anyway, you can see the Statue of Liberty in the background so the 2 islands are not that far from each other. Ugly rain clouds overhead Ellis Island looks like a nice place to be on a sunny day. Another tip is if your schedule ends up in having to eat lunch either at Liberty Island or Ellis Island, do it at Ellis Island. Same cafeteria food/prices (the same vendor runs both places) but a lot less crowded on the Ellis Island side. If it wasn’t for the rain, this would a spectacular area to see the skylines of Manhattan. But now, you can barely even see Manhattan out on the left with the rain clouds covering many of the buildings. Yeah, not going to see much up at One World Observation Deck right now. Time to board the ferry

Toto, I don't think we are on a Royal Caribbean cruise to Perfect Day anymore... No, this is not the restroom nowadays but this was from the old days

Walking Inside: This is pretty scary - they use this barbaric-looking tool to flip people's eyelids to check for a special disease from Europe. You can blind someone by poking their eyeballs out...

Overall, I rate Ellis Island a “hidden gem”. Everybody knows about the Statue of Liberty and that’s the main draw. Ellis Island is just an “add-on” that some people don’t even care about as it’s optional to get off the ferry to see Ellis Island. Some people remained on the boat during the Ellis Island stop and headed directly back to Manhattan. That’s too bad as they missed an important aspect of US History. I highly recommend people to add one plus hour to their itinerary to see Ellis Island during their Statue of Liberty visit as the price is already included in the ferry ride. Anyway, start from the beginning of the welcome hall. We saw many International students/young people from different countries in NYC as part of their countries’ sponsored tours. Each person has a distinctive color backpack and each one has a plastic lanyard with a NYC MetroCard on their necks to travel to various sites. This yellow backpack group is from Germany. We would see other nationalities later on.

Looking at the small areas of blue patches of blue skies, we thought we had avoided the rain. We would be so wrong… Ellis Island – in the old days, European immigrants arrived in NY/US and they were processed at Ellis Island. This serves as the gatekeeper for the US immigration official to determine if the folks are allowed to be in the US or be sent back to their original country. Obviously this area is no longer serving that purpose and they made this place a museum to show the treatment of the immigrants. Sometimes in less than red carpet welcome treatments.

After lunch, we went to visit the uncle in prison (aka obligatory gift shop for a magnet souvenir) and then stood in line for the ferry to go to Ellis Island. Be sure to stand in line for the correct ferry. The one on the left goes to New Jersey. The one on the right goes to NYC, which surprisingly has less than half of the lines of NJ folks. Guess lots of folks are staying on the NJ side.

Speaking of costs and traveling, maybe I should talk a little about some Finances of travel. One trick I use to help with the cost of travel is obtaining credit cards with high rewards after spending X amount within the first 3 months of getting the new credit card. Now do go out and get a new credit card just because you want the rewards and foolishly spend the money buying stuff you don’t need. But if you are going on a vacation that will be expensive (like a cruise), it makes sense to think ahead. Last Fall, I got the JetBlue credit card to use to fly to Florida for the Odyssey cruise and after meeting their spending requirements, I ended up with close to 90,000 miles points. I then turned that into miles to redeem to fly the 4 of us to NYC this summer on JetBlue for free. Not to mention the credit card gives you and 3 other companions free check-in suitcases for free so I can stuff all kinds of “just in case” things inside. Then earlier this year, I got a new Chase card to pay for the NYC hotel and other expenses. That will net me at least 75,000 points which I will use to redeem for next year’s European trip. The idea is to try to think one vacation ahead and get a new credit card with a great sign-up bonus to get you the welcome bonus to offset the next vacation. For my December Carnival cruise, the final payment is due in September. I plan to get a different Chase card that will pay 120,000 points after meeting the spending requirements. Use that card to pay for the Carnival cruise and combine the 120K here and 75K from NYC trip, that’s 200K points to use to partly offset the cost to flying a family of 4 to Europe or transfer the miles to the airline and redeem them on Virgin Atlantic or British Air. As I said, don’t get credit cards if you can’t afford the payments. Never carry any balance as the interest rate is crazy high. But if you are going to be going on various trips, look for credit card sign-up bonuses that help offset some of the costs… And never get more than 2 cards per year as that will make your credit score go down and some lenders won't give you a new card if you had more than 5 new cards in a 24 months period. Be strategic in which cards to get and when to get them...

Dani, Thanks for the tips on the areas to stay in London. I’ll come back to this page later on when I’m ready to book the trip. Being anal, I can’t travel light. I have too much “just in case” stuff. Always feel the need to have all the “backup of backups” with me… We were just watching the Paris Olympics opening ceremony on TV. They certainly did a fantastic job in getting people interested in Paris. I can imagine tourism to Paris will reach new heights after the games. Next summer could be a lot of people going there. I’ll be hanging out with lots of my new BFFs in Paris next summer. In watching the opening ceremony on TV, I have created a new Bucket List – attend one Olympics Opening Ceremony to be part of the spectacle. With the Olympics coming to LA in 4 years, that’s probably my best (cheapest) option to attend.

OK. More than enough pictures. Time for a late lunch at 2 PM. Since you are essentially a “captive audience” in being on the island, your food choices are pretty limited in grabbing lunch while at Liberty Island. More in line with average theme park food. You eat to survive not because it looks great. As the impending storm was approaching, it was very windy outside and we opted to eat indoors instead but we couldn’t find tables with seats and had to stand to eat. Just stand there and eat your “meh” lunch. Again, the glamour of traveling that never made it into social media pages...

This is the original torch. The one she is holding now is a replica.

Then it’s time to get our backpacks and walk around the general area. Across from the Statue is the museum and the Platform area for more photo ops

At the base of the statue inside the fort, there's a small museum area They have a description on the various parts of the statue and what issues face each section Back to where we originally started at the pedestal entrance. Time to move on

All done with the upper part of the pedestal, it's time to go to the middle part. The stairs were one way up and a different way down. The Statue technically sits on top of the fort so you can walk out and see a different view from there.

The walkway area at the pedestal isn't very wide so that's part of the reason they limit the number of pedestal tickets sold daily With the pending storm, it was very windy up above as you can see the wind blowing my wife’s blouse. Another view of the MSC ship docked in Brooyln Traffic jams don’t just occur in Manhattan. You have many ships lining up to see the Statue out in the harbor:

Onward with the trip report: We made it to the top and time to head out to the tiny openings at the 4 sides Here is the view as you walk out Looking up Looking at the central plaza. Over at the other end is the museum. We would go there after we are done with the pedestal

Thanks for the info. I will check out these regions after we have the dates set for next year. For Paris, here's one sample place near Paris Disneyland I just dropped in the potential dates and got many results for next year as it's still very early in the process: Plus tax and fees, it's like $260 USD/night. Supposed to be within 10 minute's walk to shopping and public transit. There are many more of these. Will need to spend weeks researching the area next year trying to get a lay of the land as to what's out there but I prefer to be here than in central Paris

So just making sure I understand what fee you are referring to, are you talking about the $2.50/$2.75 additional fee tacked onto the base taxi fare? Are you saying they never collected this fee? This fee is just on the books they were supposed to collect but was never implemented? Not sure I understand the background.

NYC hotel in Midtown in June is typically $350+/night plus tax. I have just done a very high-level glance at London prices but I haven't had much time to research what area I'd rather be. Still need to research the Carnival cruise coming up in December first. For London/Paris, I wouldn't mind being a little further out from the city center and just commuting via subway to the tourist destinations. For NYC, I wanted to be part of the city as I know what suburban life in the US is like as that's where we live but I have never been out in the suburbs/outer regions of Europe so I wouldn't be averse to trying that as well as we can take the subway into the city. I know for Paris, we will be on the other East side closer to Paris Disneyland. We looked at going there back in 2019 before decided going to Tokyo instead so I have a vague idea where things are in Paris. I'm thinking about Airbnb and VRBO rentals for Paris as we will be further out in the suburbs and take the train into Paris, which is supposed to be 30 minutes away. Just need to be close to public transit at places near Euro Disneyland.

How was the Eurostar? I have read that many people prefer it over the plane ride. Did you go from London to Paris or the other way around? I have also seen videos on warnings of scammers once you get out from the Paris side trying to take you to your final destination. If we can make it, we will be in Paris around the end of June, similar to the NYC schedule. Per the weather forecast that I have seen, Paris should be in mid-70s or low 80s in the late June period so hopefully, it won't be too bad.