This day started out beautifully, with a great sunrise picture of 2 sailboats we were traveling alongside for a while – Whisper and Happy Hours II.  I happened to see them motor by us at 6 am and noticed the sunrise to think what a great picture it would make.

For the rest of the day we had a bit of a breeze, but so many great sights to see!  We could see the skyline of New York from quite far out.  The buildings in Manhattan are very distinctive from a distance.

As we passed the Staten Island Ferry, I thought about visiting our friends there – Arthur! – but we were busy navigating toward our marina.

As you can see we had some great views of Lady Liberty as we approached the entrance to the harbor.

We were both amazed to see a large sailboat dodging ferries and Circle Line while smack dab in NY Harbor.

We finally settled in our marina, on the New Jersey side, and got ourselves set up for a little tourism.  Here’s a link to the video of this leg of the trip.

We walked over to the Liberty State Park where we could catch a ferry for Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.  I was most interested in Ellis Island – sadly a lot of their exhibits were not available because the power plant was still not functioning after Hurricane Sandy, and they weren’t able to provide the proper environment to preserve the exhibits on site.

There was a huge line to get on the ferry back to New York, but not for the ferry back to New Jersey.  We hopped on the NJ side and rode over to the Statue of Liberty, and then switched ferries to get on the New York ferry.

Once we got to NY we found our way to Chinatown to eat some delicious Xiao Long Bao – Chinese soup dumplings that I read about on Serious Eats.  We were really glad they gave us a how to on eating the dumplings so we didn’t end up with a bite of scalding hot soup splurting everywhere!  The dumplings were delicious as promised.

After Chinatown we made our way home to our Marina at Liberty Landing, via ferry, which is an experience itself!