OMG. What a huge day. Those of you who know me are probably aware that since my last car accident in Nov 2007 I have had a big problem with stairs. They kinda make me throw up from time to time… :S
The physios at the Pain Management Clinic at the Wesley put it down to maladaptive muscle behaviour, but both last two orthopaedic surgeons that I saw noted I had a ‘bony protuberance’ that was dragging along the back of my oesophagus and triggering a gag reflex which, you know, frequently results in throwing up at inopportune moments. But fuck it! Mr K bought tickets to get up into the crown of the Statue of Liberty for today and I was going to give it my best – I even had a baggie in my pocket, in case I did chuck! But, I didn’t need it! I’m impressed, don’t know if anyone else is.
We set off early this morning for Times Square to pick up a New York Pass (look it up if you want, it gets you into everything and then some) and stopped ever so briefly by the Disney Store in Times Square for old times sake, and then we head off down town by Subway to South Ferry near Battery Park. The ferries going to Liberty Island and Ellis Island are run by the National Parks dudes (the same mob who run the trips out to Alcatraz Island by the looks of it), and we took the Miss New Jersey ferry over to Liberty Island.
It should be noted that it was bloody freezing cold this morning too… I had four layers of clothing on and was still cold, I think the apparent temperature was about -4C. Shit, I hate our stinking hot tropical summers, but this crap is so much worse. Anyway, we got out on the water and you can imagine the wind chill etc made that extra special, and we walked around the base of the famous Statue of Liberty and planning on climbing up the inside of a freezing cold copper statue. Whose idea was this? On the way, I took a few nice shots of the statue, and even took an artsy up-skirt one. 😉
Then we got to stand in some queues, for at least 30 minutes, while we waited to be security screened… again. They had already screened us before allowing us to board the ferry, but here we were being screened again. I wonder at the security measures, I am pretty sure anyone intent on doing damage will find a way to do it anyway. But we get in eventually (after putting our stuff in a locker secured by finger print scan!) and make our way up to the top of the Pedestal level, which is open to the public. Approximately 11,000 people a day visit the Statue of Liberty and everyone of those can come to this level – there is even a lift that makes this far. However, if you want to go up to the crown to see what it is like inside the Statue and check out the view over Manhattan from up there, you need to be super organized and apply for tickets months in advance.
So we get inside and see all of the cool. All of it very cool except this torturous looking construction going right up the centre which is a double-helix spiral staircase which we were going to be climbing.
The framework and copper that makes up the entire statue. We got to feel the metal that the statue is constructed from, and it is roughly copper the thickness of two pennies, so not very thick and quite flexible considering what it is and what it is all holding up.
This is what the little windows in the crown look like on the viewing deck at the top and some views out the windows:
I’m just bombarding this post with pictures really, because out of the 11,000 visitors that make it out to Liberty Island every day, less than 300 tickets are issued for people to go into the crown and that is simply because there just is no space for bulk people to process through the tiny staircases – that’s 4 million visitors each year and only about 100,000 get to go to the top. Add to that, the fact that the statue was closed from Sept 2001 until it reopened in 2009, and then was closed again in 2011 for some time for renovations, so a lot of people who have visited New York in the last decade haven’t even had a chance to get in to see this.
Last time I remember going up or down such tiny stair cases would have to be in the Underground City of Derinkydu in Kapadokya, or going up into the cuppola above St Peter’s in Rome. It was tight and tiny and if you were over 6′ tall, you would have had to hunch to make it up. The steps were not a standard step height, they were so steep that I decided to come down, backwards like you would down a ladder, and the stairway was so narrow, my jacket was catching on the hand rails all the time… I found myself not so much walking up the steps but sort of holding on facing out and crab walking my way up step by step. There are five platforms where you can stop and have a break (and in my case let a noisy family of four go past us), and if it weren’t for that I don’t think I could have made it (at each of the platforms, you can simply walk around to the other side of the spiral staircase and hop in the ‘going down’ side of the stairs if you need to pike out). Crazy steps… all 182 of them.
And I made it to the top without throwing up! So proud of myself. Though I am very likely going to pay for this tomorrow.
