“The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) seeks to encourage the identification, protection and preservation of cultural and natural heritage around the world considered to be of outstanding value to humanity.”
– UNESCO.org
One of our goals on this trip is to visit as many of these World Heritage sites as possible. As the mission statement on their website declares, these sites hold significant value to the areas in which they are located. We figured this would be a good point of reference around which we could frame our visits as we traveled the world. Many of these sites are at the top of the list for visitors to these areas and for good reason!
Lady Liberty
In June, we started close to home and visited our first UNESCO site, the Statue of Liberty. Inaugurated in 1886, the National Park Service is celebrating the Statue’s 130th anniversary this year. We climbed all 357 steps to get to the crown and the views did not disappoint! Dripping with sweat, we managed to get in a few photos along the way and from the top.
View before the climb
Peeking out the crown at downtown Manhattan
It seemed only fitting that as we were practicing being tourists, we had a perfect excuse to test our selfie stick!
Testing out the Selfie Stick with Lady Liberty
After visiting the statue on Liberty Island, we took a ferry to Ellis Island where we had a chance to search the American Immigrant Wall of Honor for our ancestors’ names. We found the name of Christina’s great-grandfather who came to America from Greece in the early 1900s. This was fitting as we are planning on visiting his hometown of Chiliomodi in October during our time in Greece.
View of downtown NYC from the water
-The Morts