If you read my last few blog posts you’d have seen that I was in New York recently. You can read about seeing The Lion King on Broadway and the Empire State Building after this post. Following the agenda of a typical tourist in the Big Apple, the Statue of Liberty had to go on my New York Bucket List.
The Statue of Liberty Experience
We woke up early to get a ferry to Liberty Island to see the Lady herself. First we got a tour of the museum on Liberty Island, where we learned about the origins of and how she came to be one of the most renowned monuments in the world. Then we got to climb up to the top of the monument she stands on. It’s a very long climb. I don’t know how many steps there were, but there’s a lot.
They no longer let people up into the statue itself, so it takes you to the monument she stands on.
The view from what she stands on was spectacular. The viewing area went the whole way around her feet so we got to see the New York and New Jersey skylines.
Ellis Island
After we were done seeing Lady Liberty, it was back onto the ferry to go to Ellis Island. I felt like we were in Brooklyn (the Saorise Ronan film – not the burrow Brooklyn) as countless numbers of emigrants from allover the world entered America via Ellis Island.
There is a scene where she is getting cleared at customers and they recreated the hall it took place in. I was sad to learn that a lot of Irish emigrants had to – or chose to – change their names upon getting to America due to anti-Irish sentiment.
All I could think about was that two million people died in the Irish Famine, and two million more emigrated – primarily to the US. They used to call the ships people left on “Coffin Ships” because the conditions were that bad. I have no distant relatives that I’m aware of who emigrated – but the US is largely built upon emigration.
It was too cold to fully enjoy the experience as I spent most of it shivering. However it was the most educational actively of the trip and I’m glad I did it. Here’s to one more thing ticked off my New York Bucket list!
Have you ever been to the Statue of Liberty? What would you like to do in New York?
