Friday, July 30, 2010

Pictures 25: The Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island

Backing up a little, getting caught up again on photo posts, we venture way back to June 15 to our jaunt into the Hudson to visit the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island (which, if you want to get picky, are the Statue of Liberty National Monument and Ellis Island National Monument [part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument], both National Parks System sites in New York). Yep, they are part of the NPS, so we got to check a few more off our list of NPS sites to visit!

We decided to go on a weekday because we figured the crowds would be easier to handle - and while we were probably right in some regard, we made the sore mistake of choosing a weekday in June. Anyone with any experience with public schools in North Jersey will know that there are a few places notorious for being the destination of many schools' end-of-the-year field trip, and the Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island is one of them.  (Various resorts in the Poconos are other top choices, as are art museums in the city and historic Philadelphia - and once I even went on a June field trip to Amish Country [Lancaster County, Pennsylvania], which was definitely the best end-of-the-year field trip ever.)

So while we missed the weekend crowds, we were inundated with hordes (no, seriously - hordes) of middle-school-age kids bouncing off the walls, screaming, running back and forth, and generally being obnoxious and terrible. I can understand the impulse of taking kids that age to Ellis Island, but you really would be better off taking kids of a high school age to the site - they would probably understand it better and actually read the trillions of text-based exhibits. The kids who were there seemed to have been given a scavenger hunt to find facts and information around the site, but they seemed to better enjoy running from clue to clue than actually learning about what they were finding.

That being said, the first two hours of our jaunt into the river was pretty rough, but once the school kids cleared out just after lunch time, things quieted down and we were left with mostly fellow adult tourists, which I can deal with much easier.

A few words to the wise about visiting the Statue of Liberty (which I always want to call "Shashoo Liberty" for some reason) - book your ferry tickets early, your pedestal tickets earlier, and your crown tickets months in advance.

You must take a ferry to get to Liberty and Ellis Islands, of course, but many people (including me!) don't realize that you need to advance-purchase tickets to the observation pedestal under the statue (they are typically sold out one to two weeks in advance), and if you want to climb all the way up to the statue's crown, those tickets need to be bought three to six months in advance. Crazy! I don't know why I didn't realize these things, but at least we were able to get ferry tickets online ahead of time.

So, without further a-blah-blah, here come some pictures. I am starting out with pictures from the visit my dad, Patrick and I took to Liberty State Park the day Patrick arrived in New Jersey.

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I like this one.

26 more images below; click any one to make it bigger in Photobucket.



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My dad and Patrick

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At Liberty State Park, the old Central Railroad of New Jersey train station has a bunch of docks that used to ferry over immigrants from Ellis Island who were en route to relatives in other parts of the country; the docks have very cool lights.

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Love this train station.

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Unfortunately the inside was closed by the time we got there, so we couldn't get in to get a closer look at the old overgrown tracks.

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Made it to the ferry! Patrick dictates a video that I think we later accidentally deleted.

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Not a ton of people on the ferry.

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Life jackets

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Approaching Ellis Island

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The Great Hall - this is where all incoming travelers had to wait to be checked in and dealt with. This room was ridiculous when it came to echoes of kids' screaming. I said to Pat, "If it's this loud now, imagine what it must have sounded like with thousands of immigrants." And he made the good point that the immigrants were probably much better behaved and quieter.

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Another view of the Great Hall, from the mezzanine

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A historic photo of what the Great Hall looked like when Ellis Island was in use

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Looking out a window. Much of Ellis Island is still in need of restoration, which the NPS is working on now.

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While there is a lot of work to be done in some places, the main building really is fantastic.

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The majority of Ellis Island's exhibits were text-based and documents-based; there were very, very few artifacts or objects to look at. It was awesome, but we got very tired of reading by the end. This amazing gem was in a section about ethnic music.

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Wages

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The more things change, the more they stay the same...

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...Except here. The more things change, the more they change.

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After taking a ferry from Liberty State Park to Ellis Island, you then catch a boat from Ellis Island to Liberty Island.

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There were still a lot of people on Liberty Island, but it had quieted down considerably once the children disappeared. Oh, and how nice that the crud on my lens decided to join us!

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We like the camera timer.

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While waiting for the boat, we took a nap. Well, I did. And Pat took a picture of us, but still looked at the camera like, "Who are you and what are you doing?!"

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Coming back to Liberty State Park - both Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island in the background

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This would have been what immigrants saw as they approached the train station to be sent across the country.

While I often have a hard time visualizing what places may have looked like a hundred years ago, I really did enjoy taking the ferry around New York Harbor. Being on a boat really puts you in the immigrants' shoes, and coming up on the Statue of Liberty and the incredible buildings at Ellis Island, it's easier to imagine how awesome it must have been - especially after you had seen nothing but ocean for days or weeks at a time.

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