The Big Crabapple- Part Four- The Grand Finale!

Monday was our last full day in New York. We had an early morning because we had a scheduled tour of the Statue of Liberty at 9:00am. After all our transportation mishaps, I was nervous about making our way to Battery Park in time to meet the tour. I had particularly arranged this guided tour because Max really wanted to go inside the statue and the surest way to do that seemed to be taking a commercial tour. It was clear from the National Park Service website that entry to the statue itself was extremely limited.

After trains, taxis, and automobiles, we arrived at Battery Park just in time. We joined the horde of people standing around our tour guide and listened to his introductory spiel. The first disappointment of the day was that the tour of the Statue of Liberty did not, in fact, actually enter the Statue of Liberty. We could have ridden the ferry, walked around the base of the statue, and visited the Ellis Island museum all on our own for much less money and at a time that did not require us to rise with the chickens. Instead, we hiked around in the crowd while our tour guide plied us with apocryphal stories about his wife and, parenthetically, the Statue of Liberty.

We still made the best of things. I know Max was sorely disappointed, but he did an excellent job of pretending it was okay. I felt crushingly guilty, of course, because that is what I do. Take on the responsibility for everybody else’s feelings- especially the feelings of the people I love. We did enjoy seeing the scale and majesty of the statue. We did enjoy a quick run through the Ellis Island museum. The tour guide took a couple of cool pictures of us, so he was good for something. He also insisted on taking a group picture of the whole horde of us and offered, for a small fee, to share it with anyone who wanted a copy. I am not sure why anyone would want a picture of themselves and thirty of their closest strangers on the grass in front of the Statue of Liberty. I certainly did not.

After we finished the tour and took the ferry back to Battery Park, I had an agenda. We did not make it to the carousel in Central Park, so I wanted to at least ride the carousel in Battery Park. The Google Machine told me that this carousel was a fanciful trip under the sea on fish and other marine creatures. That intrigued me. This was apparently not the run-of-the-mill merry-go-round, but a magical adventure. I looked at the map of the park and found the location. Unfortunately, spotting a location on a map and getting my brain to direct my legs to that actual location is not that easy. We wandered around for 45 minutes trying to find it. To be fair, we spent part of those 45 minutes with an Orthodox Jewish missionary who stopped to try to recruit us to Judaism. There is the first time for everything.

When we finally reached the carousel (Christianity still intact,) it was not overwhelming at first. The carousel was small. The marine creatures were made of some sort of translucent plastic material. They also seemed small for carousel animals, but I acknowledge they were massive for fish. Still, after 45 minutes of searching, I was not about to leave the park without riding that carousel.

Things changed when the carousel started. The animals began lighting up with morphing pale pink, blue, green, and purple shades. The music with other-worldly. It was what I imagine a merry-go-round on LSD would be like. It was a pleasantly bizarre experience. I don’t think I got stoned from it. Although now that I think about it, I did have the munchies afterwards… and the last thing I wanted to eat was seafood.

This was our last Manhattan adventure. We even found a cab to take us back to Penn Station on the first try. We had Carvel ice cream at a shop near the train station and ate supper at a cute diner near our hotel. We slept reasonably peacefully through our last night in New York. The next day, we drove back to the airport. The first stop was to return the car. I could see the car rental place, but there seemed to be no way to get there from the road. I kept wishing we were living on Star Trek, and I could just ask them to beam me up. On about the fourth circle around the airport, I finally found a way off the main road into the car rental place. Relieved, I got rid of the car as quickly as I could. After another squeamish ride on the air train to the terminal, both Max and I let our shoulders release and our breath exhale. We were going home where we knew what to do and how to get places.

When we reached the Orlando airport, we got our bags and went to retrieve my car from the parking structure. Normally, we use valet parking, but the valet parking area was full when we left Orlando. We parked in the structure, noted the level and row where I left the car. We took pictures of the area. We thought finding the car would be super easy.

It was not. We wandered, hauling our suitcases behind us, trying to find the coordinates we noted when we left. We found the level and the row, but my car was not there. Both of us were tired, hungry, and sore. I felt like I should have stayed on Ellis Island. Pulling a suitcase, struggling with a backpack, and slinging a carry-on bag over my shoulder- I felt like I just got off the boat.

After 20 minutes of searching, I realized something. We were in the rental car parking structure, not the passenger parking lot structure.

I should not be allowed to leave my house without adult supervision.