On our last day in New York we took the ferry out to Staten Island, south of Manhattan and right past the Statue of Liberty - a gift to the US by France in 1886 to welcome all visitors, immigrants, and returning citizens.

We went for a wander around the island but soon realised we need not have bothered. There's not much going on.

The southern tip of Manhattan (the World Trade Center buildings would have been somewhere in the centre).

Our last night was spent at an ice hockey game between the New York Rangers and the Florida Panthers in Madison Square Garden (my birthday present to Jen - aren't I nice! ;)

Neither of us had been to a proper ice hockey match before so this was pretty exciting stuff. I was just hoping for some good fights!

The hotdog and popcorn and insert-unhealthy-food-here men kept the crowd's cholesterol levels high.

Fights I wanted, and before too long, a fight involving the refs I got - hell yeah!

A while later I got an even better one involving more refs and a stray hockey stick hahaha!

After every goal (and during every fight) the crowd went nuts, and these two chicks made out - go the Rangers!

When the fun was over it was a 5-nil drumming by the Rangers (clearly Florida should stick to warmer sports).

A few night shots of New York: Times Square (check out the big M&M on the screen above M&M's World)...

Manhattan Bridge en route to Brooklyn...

Lower Manhattan as seen from Brooklyn...

Somewhere random...

(Update - June 2013: This is looking south along Sixth Avenue. The building I've worked in for the past year now is on the extreme-right, most of it out of shot. Little did I know when I took this photo :)

The Rockefeller Center and ice rink (only here during the winter obviously). The Rockefeller Center is a complex of 19 commercial buildings (built by the Rockefeller family) covering 22 acres in the centre of Midtown Manhattan.

The following day was the first of five on the road, and the first time I'd driven since the road trip in Florida (far too long ago - I love driving!).

Driving through Manhattan was bloody fun (although probably not as fun as biking through it would be ;)

(Update - June 2013: I got that right - biking through Manhattan is very fun ;)