Day One: The boat ride! 

Monday morning we took the Circle Line boat with several hundred other people in the nice hot sun down the Hudson River to the tip of Manhattan, around the Statue of Liberty, and up the east side a tiny bit before we turned back around. This was the second one of these boat rides I have taken up here in New York, so it brought back memories and revealed sights I had forgotten. The Statue of Liberty was amazing (the last time I rode the boat was in the evening) and was very clear and magnificent. Riding right alongside Manhattan just offers an amazing view of the city: downtown, midtown, and uptown. 

I really love the architecture of New York: the new and old buildings and also the bridges. I love how the city is laid out also: the tall skyscrapers of downtown, the low skyline of midtown (except for Trump's new project), and the tall buildings of uptown, with the Empire State Building towering above the rest. On the cruise, I took lots of pictures, and sketched just a little. I found it hard to sketch while moving so fast past the buildings, however I did sketch the boat and the bottom of the Statue of Liberty from the part of the boat I sketched. That pretty much sums up my boat ride experience.