Friday 11th July - Statue of Liberty & Ellis Island

 Friday 11th July

Another beautiful fine day with alight breeze.

I got up at about 8:00 am to find coffee and breakfast - smoked salmon,  boiled eggs, herbs, special bread and Kai's Banana loaf - already to go!


At about 9:00 am we set off to catch the ferry at New Jersey to get to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.

Ellis Island was where the millions of immigrants from Europe It served as the nation's largest immigration station from 1892 to 1954, processing over 12 million immigrants. The island's name comes from Samuel Ellis, a 18th-century merchant who owned it. 

Ian parked the car in the parking lot and then we walked down to the Ellis Island Museum passed the old  disused train station that used to take the new immigrants to any where they wanted in the USA - seen in the background on the right.


We got down to the entrance to the museum:


Quite a few of these immigrants came from Russia!

After a good look around the museum we headed off to the ferry terminal to catch the ferry over to the Statue of Liberty - about a ten minute boat ride.



As we headed off to the Statue we could look back at the Ellis Island building and the Museum:


During the ten minute ferry ride we could see the Statue in the distance:


getting larger and larger:


until finally we arrived at the terminal:


and found our way round to the entrance at the back:


and eventually up the steps into the foyer:


The Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World; French: La Liberté éclairant le monde) is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, within New York City. The copper-clad statue, a gift to the United States from the people of France, to celebrate American Independence, was designed by French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi and its metal framework was built by Gustave Eiffel. The statue was dedicated on October 28, 1886. Wikipedia

I went by the elevator up to the base of the pedestal. Ian and family decided then to carry on up to the crown - 196 steps, which had no wish to do. Even the view from the pedestal back down to New York city, with the Hudson river on one side and the East River on the other, was really good


At the end of all that we met up for lunch:


A great day but tiring - lots of walking.

Two take-aways from the day:

  1. There were thousands of people there today - everything was heaving with people
  2. We had to go through airport like Security at two points on the day's visit.

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