This day is not as eventful because fatigue had built up over the previous three days, and my legs had finally made it clear that they would no longer tolerate such neglect if I didn’t give them a rest, so I decided to enjoy the weather and the views more.
A ferry ride to the Statue of Liberty
I’d like to point out that for several days in a row now, the weather has been perfect for such events, conducive to a great time. I hopped on the ferry around 10am and headed out to the island.
As one could see from afar that I was not the only one with such a good opinion of the weather – there were crowds of tourists on the island.
Liberty Island
Like anyone not living in the cave, I’ve seen it many times and from different angles in movies, vlogs and documentaries, but in real life and from such a close distance it is perceived differently – more monumental, I would say.
Although you can get a ticket to the island at any time, you need a separate ticket limited in number to get into the statue itself, and by the time I got around to planning well in advance of the trip, all the tickets were already sold out, and at that point in early September, the closest dates were December 2024-January 2025.
So on this trip I was not able to get for sure great photos from the Сrown.
A beautiful monument of its era reflecting the aspirations of an entire country, and I hope it will be so, despite the events of the previous day…. but we’ll see what happens next, people have made their choice and it seems to have been open and honest.
Ellis Island
Ellis Island was once the busiest immigrant inspection and processing station in the United States. From 1892 to 1954, nearly 12 million immigrants arriving at the Port of New York and New Jersey were processed there.
I think I spent even more time here than on the previous island – first, the ferries ran about once every half hour, and second, I managed to miss a couple while walking around inside the building and around the island.
In a separate area behind the museum there is a monument that is a huge circle made up of slabs like these with the names of, I suspect, all those 12 million people who passed through this station.
Intermission
After getting back from the ferry ride, I went to grab a bite to eat and then straight to my room to wait for the right time to go to the 9/11 museum.
9/11 Musem
The museum sets a somber tone from the very beginning with its anatomy, «welcoming» you with a dark corridor (not on the images below) with illuminated columns on which shots of Twin Towers are projected.
The towers were really huge, even from what was left of them. Even though skyscrapers had been built long before them, these were a work of art, and would stand for decades to come.
Due to the collapse of such massive structures, the entire financial district was an undesirable area to live in for a couple of years because of the micro particulate matter that rose into the air, consisting of concrete, metal, plastic, which can cause lung cancer.
I really respect that the country remembers these things rather than trying to forget it as soon as possible – they took the trouble to build a museum on this very fateful site.
There is a separate room with pictures of all the people who died in the buildings – several walls hung with home photos. In the center is a small through room where videos from home archives, photos, comments from officials, eyewitnesses and relatives of the victims are played one by one on the wall, telling about them and their last days before the tragedy. Photographs are forbidden, so they will not be here.
In fact, the museum makes quite an oppressive impression, especially when you see with your own eyes the mangled equipment, and this is only a small part of the exhibited there. If anyone needs my recommendation, I would advise against visiting it in the late afternoon like I did.
On the other hand it leaves a lot of food for thought.
At the end of the day.
It turned out to be a bit of a strange day – a nice pleasant warm fall day, and near the very evening such an ambiguous place for impressions as the 9/11 museum, however it would have to be visited on some day, so the visit fell on this day.
