day 88

got up this morning to a full house, people sleeping on mats all over the floor, lots of other couchsurfers. we finally got all ready to go and headed to new york. we wandered around a bit to find a place for breakfast and went to au bon pain, which was not very good, sorry au bon pain fans. i then decided that i wanted to find a barbershop to get a haircut and a shave so i found one and we headed over to it. walked right in and they sat me down, classic barberstyle place, and i told her that i wanted a short haircut and a shave so thats what i got. evan and matt were laughing probably the entire time because she cut most of my hair into a bowl cut and then moved onto my beard so we all thought she was done cutting my hair. she then shaved my beard off but i told her to leave the mustache but trim it up. she then finished cutting my hair and i moved into the shaving chair. i'd never gotten a barber to shave me, i never shaved with a knife razor either so a lot of firsts. it was a super relaxing experience and i got like a face message too, it was glorious. got all cleaned up and thanked the two ladies who tackled that daunting feat. i really feel like a whole new person and i look at least 10-15years younger, its crazy. i keep laughing at myself because i don't recognize myself looking so neat and trim. we headed out and had to say goodbye to matt, he was making his way back to his car in new haven and then heading back to upper new york. it was so great having him along for the end of the journey and always fun hanging out with him. he went his way and we went ours, down to the financial district to see wall street then on down to battery park. we got tickets and waited in line to go to the statue of liberty and ellis island. last time i was in nyc, it was shortly after 9/11 so the statute of liberty wasn't open to the public so it was nice to be able to go out and see it but sadly the tickets to get up into the crown were sold out. it was still a pleasant boat ride out there and it is amazing how big it is. we then cruised over to ellis island for a bit to learn about how people immigrated over to america and we tried to lookup some family members (they charge money to do that at ellis island but you can search all the same records online for free so i'm going to search online for free when i get the chance). they do have a search computer to see if any relatives of yours are in the databases and there were 2 leonard hacketts in 1912 and 1922 so i will have to do some more research on that and look into my other side of the family! i'm actually really excited about it. we got back to the mainland of new york and took the subway all the way down to coney island. we got nathan's famous hot dogs for dinner and we walked the boardwalk. a once thriving boardwalk scene was now only a block or two of rides and shops. it was just nice to be next to the beach people watching. we decided to head back to the house and catch up on the blog (catching up as we speak) and check some stuff out for tomorrow. we made the long subway ride back to brooklyn and just spent the evening chatting with several other couchsurfers before heading to bed.