New York City Travelogue (Page 2 of 3)
First pageThursday, April 1 (Continued)
From Battery Park we took the ferry to the Statue of Liberty.
We stood in line for over an hour to enter the main lobby of Statue of Liberty Museum. Then, once entering the lobby, we stood in line about an hour while climbing the 354 steps to the top of Lady Liberty's crown. The 354 steps wouldn't be quite so tiring if one didn't have to wait between each step up. The last few dozen steps up to the crown are in a very narrow corkscrew staircase that has very tiny steps. Once in the crown, the view of the city from the island at the mouth of the Hudson River was great (although our pictures didn't turn out too great because of the grey skies.) The area inside the crown was surprisingly small - only about six people can fit on the platform at one time. Going down the corkscrew steps from the crown is as difficult as the way up because its almost like climbing down a ladder.
The museum is excellent and includes fascinating information about the construction of the statue. After lunch on Liberty Island, we were onto another ferry for Ellis Island.
Ellis Island served as the entry point for America's immigrants from 1892 to 1954. Though the facility was transferred to the National Park Service shortly after it ceased operation, it sat, unused until renovation that began in 1990. Now main building at Ellis Island is the Ellis Island Immigration Museum, a wonderful museum of immigration, with artifacts, hundreds of photographs, multimedia presentations, and movies.
Millions of immigrants waited their turn for interviews and examination in the Great Hall prior to being allowed to enter the United States. Interestingly, first and second class passengers on ship entering New York were cleared for immigration on board the ships - only those in lower class accommodations were forced to be processed through Ellis Island.
That night was saw the Broadway play Rent.
Friday, April 2
One of my favorite days in the city (second to my visit to the Mining Co.) began with a tour of the headquarters of the United Nations. Seeing the chambers of the General Assembly and Security Council was quite impressive. After our guided tour, we mailed some postcards using U.N. stamps at the U.N. post office and I went wild purchasing books, posters, and flags in the U.N. Bookstore.
That afternoon and evening we visited the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). The paintings of Picasso, van Gogh, Gaughin, and Seurat fill the walls - one could spend days at MoMA.
Saturday, April 3
Bright and early we walked over to Rockefeller Center and stood outside the studio for the Today show (yes, it's Saturday but there's still the Weekend Today show) and then went into the studios for the NBC tour. The tour was a fascinating look at television production.
Then, we took the subway to the Lower East Side Tenement Museum which is an actual tenement from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. One apartment is kept the way it was when the building was purchased by the museum and three others are reconstructed to match the interiors as they were when three specific families lived inside.
That afternoon we visited Central Park.
The photo above shows Central Park's famous obelisk, Cleopatra's Needle in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The 843-acre Central Park was designed in 1858 by architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux.
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All photographs are copyright 1999 by Matt Rosenberg and About.com. They may not be reproduced without permission.
