Perhaps it is the unblinking gaze of the Statue of Liberty that makes her so compelling, or perhaps it is because she is a real person and not just an icon. Either way, writing about her has become a pastime among New York City tourists–a kind of touristy blog, one in which I’ve become something of an expert.

In my first visit to the statue, I wrote:

“I am standing on Liberty Island looking at a giant concrete bird and thinking: How terrible is this? Where did they get such a bad idea?”

This time around, I was struck by the understated elegance of the statue….I felt compelled to write:

“When I visited the Statue of Liberty last year, there were two things that stuck with me. One was how many people there were–and how gawky and awkward they all looked. The other was how little there was to see.”

I visited the Statue of Liberty. It was a lot of fun, and I wanted to share some impressions.

It is hard to say what is different from usual. The statue is fenced in on all sides, like some kind of museum piece. I wondered why it needed that, because tourists were not allowed to walk around it. But maybe it was not for them; maybe the fence was there to keep off torch-carrying protesters (just as the fences around museums are meant to keep off vandals).

We got up close to the “Statue of Liberty” (or Lady Liberty as she is generally called). The guidebook said that her arms had been damaged by an accidental fall in a storm, and so instead of being able to reach out and hold things she could only hold them up in front of her. This seemed a bit like an insult, but I couldn’t find anything about the incident online, so I’m not sure if it’s true or not.

Statue of Liberty: The first time I visited the Statue of Liberty, I encountered a high school student with a “Statue of Liberty” button. He explained to me that there are two statues of Liberty – that one is in New York, and this one is in France. You can’t see the other statue from here.

I had been to New York City on numerous occasions and had never seen this “other” statue. It was easy to assume that either it was under construction or had fallen into disrepair.

Upon leaving the Statue of Liberty, I immediately realized how wrong my assumption was. There was no point on the shore where you wouldn’t have seen the Statue of Liberty. But because she’s so tall and so far away, there were many points where it could be hard to see her clearly. It felt like visitors to New York City who don’t know Manhattan well often assume they’re going to make a U-turn when they cross the Brooklyn Bridge or enter Manhattan after driving over the George Washington Bridge. They don’t realize they’re already there.

The statue of Liberty is the most famous sight in New York City. I’ve been to New York a couple times, and had a chance to look at the statue from across the harbor. I thought it looked pretty good, but thought there were several things wrong with it, which would be easy to fix. I can’t remember exactly what they were, but one of them was that her gown was clearly meant to be a running suit, but it’s not clear what she could run in.

So I started wondering: how much would it cost to build a Statue of Liberty with a working heart?

The Statue of Liberty has a small museum on the grounds, with free admission. It’s in the big room above the main immigration building. There’s a long line for this place, which we found by chance.

It’s like a small gift shop, with a few things that you can buy. There are many pictures and models of the statue, which is in good repair but kind of boring.

And then there is also an interesting video. The narrator is a woman named Vera, who talks very slowly, but it’s fascinating to see her talk fast while she runs around doing things. She seems to have memorized all kinds of details about the statue and its history, but manages to get everything right even though she doesn’t seem to be writing anything down or planning ahead. She knows exactly when to start talking about the construction project and how close it was to completion.

The video is so fascinating that you don’t notice that you’re watching it for about three minutes before you realize that you’ve already been there for two hours and are now at the end of a long line again.

For some reason I had the notion that there are lots of buskers in New York. This is not true. There are hardly any. The ones you see are either professional street performers or people who have been trained to play music.

The reason they don’t show up more often is that it’s hard to make a living from busking in the city. Most of the time you can’t make enough money to get by, and the times when you can are too unpredictable for a career to develop.*

I took this one as a professional tone, because she knows that there aren’t many statues of liberty at all, and she knows why.