Heading home – First leg – Staten Island to Poughkeepsie, NY
When we first woke and looked across the bay, there was a low fog obscuring the New York City skyline but it didn’t last long.
After a couple of days as tourists in New York City, it was time to start making our way back to Ottawa, Canada. We had left our car in Poughkeepsie, NY and traveled into New York City by train so now it was time to reverse that process and return to Poughkeepsie to once again have our own mode of transportation.
While on Staten Island, we had stayed in a second floor room at the Harbor House, a B&B located immediately across from the Hudson River. Great views of the New York City skyline and lots of opportunities to see ships coming and going all day long. Th building is showing its age with dated fixtures and some peeling paint but the rooms are currently being renovated so some of those issues will likely be dealt with during this renovation process. Breakfast was an American continental style-breakfast rather than a European-style hot breakfast so if you rise early and do a lot of walking, you might need to top up before lunch :-). A number of room options were available and pricing was definitely less than in downtown Manhattan. Getting to Manhattan was pretty simple with regular bus service close by that will take you to the ferry terminal and from there the Staten Island Ferry and New York subway system allows you to get almost anywhere in Manhattan for a fare of $2.25 each way.
Alice Austen House Museum
The Alice Austen House is located directly across the street from the B&B. Alice Austen was a pioneering female Staten Island photographer who began her photographic exploration in 1877 when, at the age of 11, she was given a camera by her uncle.The Alice Austen House is now maintained and operated as a museum by the Alice Austen House Museum Historic House Trust. Although I would have like to have seen the Alice Austen photographs on display in the house, we were on our way to Manhattan before the museum opened each morning and didn’t return to Staten Island until after the museum closed in the afternoon. Perhaps our timing will be better some other time. For this trip, peeking through the closed door was the best that I could do! The roses were nice too!
The shoreline of the Hudson River has been reinforced with stone in this area to reduce erosion but each night fishermen took up positions along the bank of the river to try their luck with rod and reel. I didn’t see anyone catch any fish but one fellow told me that thee were some pretty big fish caught by fishermen just fishing along these shores. 
This was our last trip on the Staten Island Ferry so I used my 300mm lens to capture, as best I could, the various types of boat traffic that passed us along the way as well as too get some shots of the shoreline buildings. The vibration of the ferry engines and the movement of the ferry on the slight chop meant that I had to hand hold the camera and longer lens and make sure that it wasn’t resting against any parts of the ferry structure.
Golf course in New Jersey
