The Statue of Liberty is on an island in the harbor and must be approached by ferry - from either Manhattan or New Jersey. Tickets are sold by the park service and those to climb the statue sell out far in advance. but even for the ferry you should buy tickets in advance - since the lines can be very (hours) long if you don;t buy in advance.

The Bakery is not a sight - just a bakery.

Getting around New Jersey (which is fairly suburban) will be difficult without a car - public transit is aimed at getting commuters back and forth to the City - not around a bunch of places in NJ.

Are you flying into NYC to see one sight and a bkery? How long will you be here? What other plans do you have? Hotels will not put 5 people in a room - so you need either a suite hotel or to get 2 rooms.

When will be you be here and what is your budget.

People may then be able to help.

You can get info on trains and buses at the NJ Transit web site - but for 5 people trekking around may get expensive.

True he Statue is on an island in the harbor and must be approached by ferry - from either Manhattan or New Jersey. Getting to the Manhattan location by public transportation is much easier than the NJ location.

If you are going to the Bakery be prepared for long lines. It is in Hoboken NJ. They recently built a W hotel in Hoboken.

On Travelocity under more optionsfor searching hotels, you can put in the address of the bakery, the hotel list that comes up will be the closest to that address.

There are some hotels near PATH stations in NJ. If you can find one in Jersey City (Newport area), then you can probably do what you want to do without a car. But it's not going to be easy. It is possible (with some walking) to get to Liberty State Park for the ferry to the Statue of LIberty, but it requires you to take both the PATH and a light rail train. This trip alone is going to cost over $20 for a family of 5 (each way). So while you might possibly save a bit on accommodations by staying in NJ, you do need to figure in the cost of transportation which is not inconsiderable.

Carlo's Bakery is in Hoboken, which is reachable by PATH, and there are a couple of hotels in Hoboken, so it's not that bad a place to stay if you don't want to stay in Manhattan, but as everyone else says, it's pretty hard to get around NJ without a car. You do need to realize that the bakery itself has a small storefront, so you can probably stand in line and buy a cupcake and little else. But it's really popular with the tourists.

The one thing you should NOT do is to stay in a hotel in the Meadowlands or Fort Lee for this trip. There are some relatively cheap hotels there, but the connections to all the places you want to reach are pretty difficult and expensive. My recommendation is to stay in either Manhattan (below Canal) or near a PATH station in NJ.

You should also be aware that the Statue of Liberty is currently closed. You can visit Liberty Island and the Ellis Island museum, but you cannot go into the statue. Many people don't want to spend the money and time given this, so they just take the free Staten Island ferry. But you can certainly go, and the crowds probably won't be quite as bad as they normally would be.