As a child I was fascinated by New York City. I loved the skyscrapers, the chaos, the romantic idea of spending my honeymoon there someday, and the desire to see the iconic Statue of Liberty. I was fascinated by the history, the architectural design, and the emotional draw of Our Lady Liberty.

So naturally she was one of the very first elements of the Around the World puzzle I wanted to piece together. Unfortunately, my brain was not thinking too clearly after almost two months of nothing but initial sorting, and it took me a while to realize I should have been setting these pieces aside earlier on as they were pretty easy to pick out. Once I did finally sit down to start putting her together, I realized I was missing quite a few pieces still. What a bummer! A day or so later, I was elated to discover I had pulled all the pieces of her face. Woo hoo! I quickly put them together, only to realize much to my shock that it was NOT her face! What do you think? This looks like it could have been her face, right? Same green coloring…

Alas, I realized it was actually the face of another “green” statue — The Freedom Monument in Riga. LOL Who knew?

After I finished assembling what I could figure out from the rough initial sort, I saw I still had a lot missing and I was a little bummed, but knew I would eventually find more pieces. I set her aside and started sub-sorting all the various skyscraper buildings I had dumped into one big bucket in the initial sort. This was my biggest single “sorted” bucket and consisted of somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,000 pieces (give or take 500 or so – haha).

Much to my surprise, I immediately started seeing some more pieces that I was pretty sure went to Lady Liberty. Being a little smarter this time around, I immediately set those aside and each night after I finished sorting for the day, I would take those pieces I had set aside and worked to place them in what I had already started. Here is the result.

Of course, I still have a few pieces to go in her robe, most of her torch holding arm is still missing, and even part of her face and crown are still eluding me. I’m sure they are miss-sorted into another bucket of completely unrelated pieces that it will take me many more months to find, but that’s okay. I know they will turn up at some point.

In the meanwhile, I am going to continue with my tradition started with The Forbidden City and give a little bit of history and interesting (to me anyway) facts about this particular landmark.

Every history book on the planet will tell you the basic facts like she was given as a gift to the United States in 1886 by France to celebrate winning our freedom from England and the abolition of slavery. The tablet she holds in her left hand is inscribed with the date of America’s Declaration of Independence — July 4, 1776. The figure herself is fashioned after Libertas, the Roman Goddess of Freedom.

Not to body shame our beautiful Lady, but I have to say — she is a big girl! She weighs approximately 225 tons, stands 151’1″ tall (that last inch is what makes her a giant — hee hee), wears a size 879 shoe and has a 35-foot waistline! Yikes! I would not want to buy her next pair of “Air Jordan’s” that’s for sure. I think one of her most interesting features is her crown — the pointed rays of her crown represent the seven continents and the seven seas for a global representation of freedom.

The Hollywood Link: While the Statue has appeared in numerous movies throughout history, there are a few which really stand out. Planet of the Apes (1968) was the first movie in which she appeared — half buried in sand. She was also completely “destroyed” in Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow. Clearly Hollywood has not been so nice to our Lady!

I was also able to make my first big connection of two previously non-related image elements – combining the Statue with the Washington D.C. sign. I’m pretty sure there’s some irony there — but that’s a whole different story for a different day I suppose.