Staten Island Ferry, New York City > Reviews (2)

As I carry on with my reviews of the sights and sounds of New York City I couldn't miss out on one of the main methods of transport used and one of the cheapest too, its completely free!

New York City is made up of five boroughs, Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, The Bronx and Staten Island.

The only non-vehicular way to access Staten Island is using the free ferry run by the New York City Department of Transportation that commutes between the Whitehall terminal in Manhattan and the St. George terminal on Staten Island.

The fleet is made up of 9 different ferries, Spirit of America, Sen. John J. Marchi , Guy V. Molinari, Samuel I. Newhouse, Andrew J. Barberi , John F. Kennedy , John Noble, Alice Austen, Michael Cosgrove , American Legion III.

The Spirit Of America is the newest ferry at only 4 years old and the Barberi and Newhouse are the highest passenger capacity vessels in the world at 6000 passengers each.

60000 people use the ferry each day to commute between Staten Island and Manhattan whether it be for work, pleasure or if your a tourist like we were and the ferries run approx every 30 minutes or 20 during peak times.

Even if your not going to Staten Island as a tourist its a great free way to see the Statue Of Liberty on Liberty Island and also Ellis Island which is home of the Immigration Museum.

Unfortunately I didn't get to either of these due to bad weather on the day we planned to go but we did get some great pictures of the statue from the ferry on the way back, on our trip over to Staten Island it was torrential rain and wind so we had to stay inside.

You also get fantastic view of the Brooklyn Bridge and Manhattan as you head back towards it.

The trip is only 25 minutes each way so is a fairly quick thing for you to do but as its free you could ride it all day if you wanted too!

I highly recommend a ferry ride, its free and a great way to see Manhattan from a different view point.