Hi,
This weekend 15 January 2011, is a long weekend due to Martin Luther King's Birthday on the 17 January. Was all alone at home so was looking for ideas to take a trip alone. Philadelphia or Atlantic City would have been great, I was already late for that. So took a trip to Staten Island via the Ferry.
Let home around 10 AM and reach the Ferry Terminal at around 10:35 and after a wait of around 20 minutes the ferry arrived. It was pretty cold day with the temperature hovering around 0 to -3C. The Ferry passes the Statue of Liberty so took quite a few snaps of it. It also gives you the opportunity to have a good view of the New York Skyline. The New York Harbor was also in full view. After around 20 minutes we reached Staten Island. You may like to print out the PDF they provide on the Staten Island Website. You can access it from here.
Staten Island has no tourism information desk at the ferry terminal. Luckily walking around in the St. George's area I found the New York State Library behind the Borough Council. There I took help of the librarians to find out what are the places of interest.
After looking around I found Tinsellville where there is the historic Richmond Town, which is like a preserve of the old way of living interesting. Also in my radar was the Greenbelt Conservancy. So I took bus no S74 and headed to Richmond. It looked like there was much more snow in Staten Island than mainland New York. It looked pretty all around if you ignore the slush that the snow caused. After around a 25 minute ride I reached the Richmond Historic Town. Well to be frank I was disappointed in the sense there was no visitor center even though there was a direction it was closed. What I must say the area looked splendid with all the snow around and the cottages that dotted the area. There were two churches in the vicinity but both were closed. I trekked around on my own look for sights to see. After moving around in circles for some time I found the mail town that was talked about. There was no one there but the town was beautifully decorated.
After walking in the sown a lot after around an hour, I started to feel tired. I wanted to go to the Greenbelt Conservancy but there was no available for direction, so I decided to head back to the St. George's area and explore it.
Returning to the St. George's area I trekked around for sometime. The chill has grown from the time I left home and I was also beginning to get tired. So I walked back to the ferry terminal to take the Ferry back to New York. I decided to come back in spring with more information in hand.
Standing in the front of the ferry the chill of the wind was hitting the face but the view was definitely worth it.
Back in New York, I walking passed the US Customs House by the Bowling Green and the Bull of New York. This building also houses the US Bankruptcy Court, which I guess must have been pretty busy in the last couple of years.
Reached home at around 3:45 PM. Download the pictures and started to play around with them. In the mean time Kaushik (my friend) invited me for dinner with Koraisutir Kochuri, very tempting. I had not had lunch till now so decided to have it before being picked up by Kaushik. After a small stopover at the Indian Street (don't actually know what is the name of the Street actually) reach Kaushiks home and played around with his two lovely kids. After a stuffing of Kouchuri left his home around 9:15, took the PATH to come back home and hit the bed. Not a bad way to spend the day.
Some pictures were taken. Click here to view them.
