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Sheinelle, Craig and Dylan visit Governors Island, NYC's lesser-known park

We learned a thing or two about the lesser-known New York City island ... and Saturday's TODAY anchors!
/ Source: TODAY

New York is a big city, but Manhattan is a small island. (A hot and loud and sometimes smelly one, in the summertime!)

So what do you do when you need to get away, but can't really get away? Catch a free 7-minute ferry to Governors Island, a 93-acre public park just a stone's throw from lower Manhattan.

TODAY anchors Sheinelle Jones, Craig Melvin and Dylan Dreyer did just that this week and taught us a thing or two about the lesser-known New York City island ... and each other!

Governor's Island was built as a fort around 1800. By 1850, it was used as a prison. In the 1990s, the island was decommissioned as a military base and absorbed by the City of New York, which used the debris from the Lexington Avenue subway construction project to build onto the existing plot of land.

Now, it's a magical place with no cars (and no noise, as Sheinelle observed!), ice cream, slides, and some killer views of Lady Liberty. The TODAY crew rode a tandem bike along the water, climbed the stones that made up the original sea wall ... and popped some champagne to commemorate their first field trip together!

Later, on the TODAY plaza, the three reflected on things they had learned about each other during their outing. Craig reveled that Sheinelle is a "bit of germaphobe" who doesn't like share food ... and that the ladies did not pull their weight during that tandem bike ride.

Whoa, we're gonna need a bigger umbrella for that shade!

Looks like a fun day — and a perfect setting for this weekend's Pinknic rosé festival. When's the next ferry?