For our New York Trip, we started off at the Bronx Zoo then stayed overnight at the Holiday Inn Manhattan. The next morning we started early and did a Statue of Liberty tour, which included a ferry to Liberty Island, access to the pedestal, and the Statue of Liberty Museum.  We headed over to the Empire State Building that same day to complete our New York portion of our road trip. 

Statue of Liberty

-Access to the crown has been restricted since start of the pandemic. Tickets were only being sold to enter the pedestal  at the time of our trip. 

-Our tickets included access to Ellis Island and Ellis Island Museum, which we unfortunately did not visit. I underestimated the amount of time I thought we'd spend at the Statue of Liberty and we had to rush over to make our timed entry to the Empire State Building

-Liberty Island has dinning options, gift shops, and a free audio tour. Not to mention, time you'll spend taking pictures on the pedestal and time going through the small museum. I allotted 3 hours and we ended up spending a little over 4 hours taking the ferry over, seeing the statue, entering the pedestal, and going through the museum. We waited in the ferry line for about 30-40 minutes, and boarding and disembarking from the ferry takes about another 20+ minutes, not including the actual time spent on the ferry. Keep that in mind if you book reservations after. 

Empire State Building

-I also underestimated the amount of time we would spend at the Empire State Building. From a childhood experience, I had just remembered heading up to the observatory and taking pictures. However, the Empire State Building was quite an experience. There was a gallery/museum, exhibits, movie clips played throughout. It was a really nice to see how the Empire State Building experience evolved over the years. There are two floors set as observatories. The first is an indoor observatory on the 86th floor. The highest you can get is the 103rd floor which is an outdoor observatory. Prepare to spend around $35 on their picture package. 

Bronx Zoo

-The Bronx day was a full day experience. We spent about 6 hours at the zoo. Of course, Christian is an animal and dinosaur enthusiast so we had to see every exhibit and every single animal. 

-The Bronx Zoo has free entry Wednesdays, however, I strongly suggest you go any other day of the week with a paid ticket. One reason being, that the zoo is packed on Wednesdays. The main reason being on Wednesdays with free admissions you have to pay to enter each exhibit. On a paid day, entry to the exhibits are free of charge. The exhibits include Congo Gorilla Forest, Children's Zoo (petting farm and section where you can feed the animals), Wild Asia Monorail (its essentially a monorail through a safari), Jungle World, Tiger Mountain, and Butterfly Garden. They also included the Bug Carousel and Nature Trek free of charge with our paid ticket. So, you'd actually save money going with a paid ticket vs going on a free Wednesday and paying for some or all exhibits.