NO RAIN/HARD HATS

Well, yesterday was different.  It did not rain.  We did not lounge around in the hotel until late morning.  I was out on my Starbucks run at 7AM, bringing back tea for Ellie, coffee for myself, and a slice of banana bread to enhance our hotel-supplied yogurt for breakfast.  We left the hotel shortly after 8, headed for Grand Central Station, whence we negotiated the subway down to the southern tip of the Manhattan island.  From the subway station, we made our way across Battery Park to the ferry terminal, expecting to arrive way too early for the first, 9:30 ferry to the Statue of Liberty and, beyond, to Ellis Island; and were amazed to find already a mass of fellow-tourists waiting patiently in line in cold. windy weather...

And we were still the early birds.  Behind us, the line continued to grow for another forty-five minutes before departure time.  Before that, though, there was the passage through airline-style security--which made us feel already like those immigrants whose point of origin in this country we had come to see.

We had read about the installation on Ellis Island by the French artist JR, whose "Pervasive Art" projects acts as interventions in socially-charged environments such as this one.  We had bought tickets in advance for a hard-hat tour to see his "Unframed--Ellis Island" project, installing enlarged photographic images of immigrants and island staff amongst the decaying buildings of the hospital where those deemed too sick to enter the country were treated; and, as I say, we had already begun to feel like those "huddled masses" as we passed through security and finally stepped onto the boat with literally hundreds of other tourists who packed the ferry's decks...

 As I suspected would be the case, most of them disembarked at the Statue of Liberty...

... leaving just a handful of us headed on for Ellis Island.

A friendly greeting there, once we landed, from the ranger staff.  We were joined by our tour guide, Jessica...

... who led us out of the main buildings and across the island to the hospital, where we were provided with the promised hard hats, to prevent accidents in what we would soon discover were seriously decaying buildings...

Our guide was knowledgeable and led the tour with great sympathy for both the immigrants who landed here and the medical staff who took care of them.  Contrary to popular belief, the place was not quite the cruel, uncaring reception area it is commonly reputed to be.  Over the 70 years of its operation, only 2 percent of immigrants were actually turned away.  The others, even the sick and the infirm, were treated with the intention to ready them to life in America--a country that needed this immigrant work force, much as we need out immigrants today.

The art installation we had come to see was not, then, the main focus of our tour.  We came across snatches of it, here and there, as we progressed through the buildings.  Had we been alone, coming across the photographs unexpectedly, I think they would have worked on us with great emotional affect: ghostly presences summoning the spirits of the past, they speak to us amongst the ruins from more than a century ago with all the eloquence of human suffering and aspiration.  Here are some snapshots that we took along the way...

Spectacular views of New York along the way...

Once our tour was ended, we decided that our Ellis Island experience was sufficiently complete and, rather than explore the rest of the many exhibitions there, we returned directly to the pier and caught the already departing boat back to Battery Park, finding it now even more crowded than when we left.  The whole of the southern end of Manhattan, we discovered, is a tourist haven.  We shouldered through the crowds as we made our way up toward our next intended destination, the 9/11 memorial and museum.  First, though, we had to deal with hunger.  Having eaten nothing since our early morning banana bread, we were in need of sustenance--and it proved hard to find, aside from the fast food places that cater to the visitors.  Directed, finally, to a local diner, we were lucky to be shown to a nice window table after only a short wait, and enjoyed a so-so late eggy breakfast there.

Out plan to visit the 9/11 museum proved unexpected naive.  We made our way down to the memorial site, where the two great water treatments marking the footprints of the fallen towers were both surrounded by milling tourist crowds...

When we found the museum, we were dismayed to find not only long lines for entrance tickets, but more long lines for designated entry times.  It would have taken hours to get inside.  Discouraged, we postponed our visit for another time, vowing next time to buy tickets in advance online.  Instead, we took the subway back to Grand Central and took advantage of a couple of free hours to rest before our evening's outing.

What an evening!  Our friend Alice, whom we had come to know in Los Angeles, now lives in an apartment with a peek-a-boo view of the East River...

... and she had assembled a marvelous, lively group of friends for us to meet.  Good food and wine, good conversation, good new friends... what could be better?  We returned on foot to our hotel much later than we had expected, quite weary, but grateful for another engaging New York experience.