New York; Saturday, 17 December, 2022

My body clock was still clearly not adjusting and I woke up again just after 5am (also realising that I’d probably best just stick to this routine as otherwise it’ll be even worse when I get back to the UK and have to adjust back again!), so I dozed for about an hour, had a slow shower and read the news online before heading down for breakfast just as it opened at 7. Thankfully as I came back up to my room after breakfast I was able to see that the murk and drenching rain of the previous day had cleared and instead New York dawn was revealing a clear blue sky – which was good as I was due to be outside for most of the day.

I headed over to the subway station and caught the train downtown to the southern tip of Manhattan and the ferry terminal for the boats across to Liberty and Ellis Islands. When I first came to New York in 2017 I hadn’t booked a trip out to the islands in advance and it was only when I got here that I found out you needed to do it some time in advance. Back then tickets had been sold out and when I checked this morning once again there were no tickets available, so it was quite good that I’d booked my tickets back in November.

After passing through the airport style security check at the ferry terminal I hopped on the next boat across to Liberty Island the first stop of the day. It was only about 10 minutes across to the island, but the views were amazing, both of the approach to one of the most iconic statues in the world, but also the views of Manhattan stretching North up the island with block upon block of Skyscrapers.

Landing on the island I immediately headed round to the bottom of the pedestal as I had a 10am ticket for entry to the statue. There are three levels of access – just the island, the island and the pedestal and island, pedestal and access to the crown of the statue. The latter is limited to only a couple of hundred people a day and does involve a near 400 step climb from the top of the pedestal, 600 steps from the ground – I’d decided that I really wasn’t up to that, so I’d opted for a pedestal ticket instead, and then cheated by getting the lift up to the top.

I spent quite a bit of time taking in the views from the base of the statue, and then working my way back down by stairs to the lower levels of the pedestal and then out onto the top of Fort Wood, which has been there for much longer than the statue, but was chosen as a good site to place the statue on. From the edge of Fort Wood you get some of the best views of the statue in its full glory, you’re far enough away to actually be able to see the face and details, but close up enough to get the full scale.

From the statue I wandered over to the museum that’s located on the back edge of the island and had a look around that – though much of the content of the museum is a duplicate of the museum located in the Pedestal, infact many of the physical exhibits from the pedestal museum have been moved into this newer museum that’s open to everyone who can get onto the island. I had a bit of a wander round the edge of the island taking in the views both of the statue and New York before heading back to the ferry landing stage to continue onto the next stop.

If the statue of Liberty is the defining symbol of arriving into New York then Ellis Island was the reality for around 12 million people over 50 or so years at the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The centre was built to process the vast number of immigrants arriving into the country – the vast majority of who would pass through in a few hours and become Americans. The site closed in the 1950s and was left to decay for nearly 30 years before being rescued in the 1980s and turned into the museum that it is today.

I spent a good couple of hours exploring the different exhibits in the museum which is broken down into three key areas – immigration from the first settlers through to the establishment of Ellis Island, the Ellis Island period and then American Immigration from the 1950s to the modern day. Along with the exhibits there is also the building itself on show with it’s impressive registration hall where people queued to see if they would be let in (spoiler, only around 2% of people got deported back, mostly because – as with airlines today – the steamship companies had to pay for the deportation so they did pretty strict checks on passengers before they even set off for America)

From the museum I headed back to the quayside and took the ferry back across to New York and caught the subway back up into the centre of town to have a wander around before heading back to the hotel for dinner and another early night.