this mother is taking a picture of 2 of her children in front of the liberation monument. she was hoping that her son would look just like the soldier above, except that the boy did not at all understand what was expected from him. he kept looking up and smiling, while she kept asking him to look as in the sculpture above. it took soooo long that i could take 4 crappy pictures before i had one i was satisfied with. then the father, holding their other kid (hes on the left), demonstrated how the boy was supposed to hold his brother, and how he then had to hang his head backwards instead of looking up. pfff, what would they eventually do with this picture?! worst of all, some girls climbed onto the statue, clearly disrupting the entire image....
ah, in the back there is the statue of liberty. earlier that day we passed the endless row of people waiting to get onto a ferry towards it (4.3 million people visit it/year), surely we skipped that! we wanted to take a ferry to the liberty state park, as you have such a nice view on manhattan/lady liberty from there. but walking all the way from world trade center through battery park, staten island ferry terminal, we reached pier 9 close to the brooklyn bridge to find out that there is no ferry service at that point during weekends. by then we were so tired that we went there by car later on, just before driving back to boston. from there we saw the sunset over manhattan and it was truly scrumptious!! :)