Quote:

This is just silly. A state that directly borders NYC and has cities closer to Manhattan than many boroughs of the city itself is "unlikely?"

JC via Paulus Hook and Morris Canal / Liberty State Park has one of the best views of Manhattan and Lady Liberty in my opinion

By JAMES BARRON

(But not Jersey City)

The day began early. By 7:30 a.m., the 56 tourists from China were standing in line in the parking lot of the hotel in which they had spent the night.

They were eager to do the things first-time tourists do ? sail past the Statue of Liberty, stand atop the Empire State Building and stroll through the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

But first they had to get to the city.

That meant climbing aboard a shiny tour bus and settling in for a 45-minute ride past roadside billboards and a state prison and through the Holland Tunnel.

It is a scene that is repeated many times each morning in a stretch of New Jersey better known for oil refineries, swamps and traffic-choked highways than for providing beds for tourists from halfway around the world.

But with the number of Chinese tourists to New York soaring, New Jersey has become an unlikely base camp for many of them, including this group, which had spent the night at the Wyndham Garden Newark Airport, a scant quarter-mile from one of the runways at Newark Liberty International Airport.

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