We are off to a slow and sleepy start this morning. Todd has very cleverly reserved tickets on the ferry to the Statue of Liberty at 2:30 in the afternoon so we can afford to sleep in and then have a nice lunch with another of Todd’s college friends, Dean. On the way to lunch we manage to stop at the Strand bookstore and load up on discounted kids books and movies. We will be very grateful for the movies in a few days as we begin the road trip part of our venture. For now, though, Katie’s stroller is quite loaded down.
By 2:00 we are in Battery Park ready for the Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island Experience. We are feeling very smug that we booked our tickets in advance, passing the throngs of those who foolishly tried to show up on July 3 without reservations. Our grins will soon fade though, as the reservations seemed to matter very little. We are stuck in a security throng (I will not use the word line, as lines were not much a part of our experience. We say very little of anything so orderly as a line and much more of mad crushing hordes.) behind an elderly gentleman that is suspected of hiding weapons in his cane and thus we miss our boat to the island. We follow the masses to the waiting area for the boat and wait in 90 degree heat in an unventilated tent for 45 minutes for the next one. One woman does finally threaten to collapse and so they pull her out of the horde so she can get some fresh air. I am surprised that she is the only one to succumb as the air is stifling. The crowd is very restless and angry by the time the ferry pulls up and no one is inclined to be courteous to those with strollers or small children. It is very ugly.
We arrive at the Statue of Liberty, fight our way off the ferry and get a lovely close up peek at the beautiful green lady. Then my gaze falls upon the line, yes an actual line, for the second ferry to Ellis Island. Ellis Island is actually where I want to be, since the furthest you can go into the statue is up to the base. But Todd and the kids have never been here before and it’s one of those things you just have to do. So Todd and the kids head off into the monument
and I trek off to the find the end of the line, which seems to loop around the island a few times. By now, we are seriously in danger of missing a visit to Ellis Island as the last boats of the day don’t allow visitors to get off there. It is about 4:45 when Todd and the kids arrive from their jaunt, a little disappointed that there was so little to see, but they are just in time to meet the ferry. We push and shove our way aboard, because the line by now has disintegrated, and in a few minutes we pull up to Ellis Island.
5pm and the museum closes at 6, so we have just an hour to sprint through, what is a very fine museum and one that I am sure will be meaningful to both Todd and the kids. We race up the steps, pick up our audio guides and are just about to hit the play button when a guard announces that they are clearing the building. Apparently, although we have gone through extensive security before we boarded the only boat that brings visitors on the island, an unattended stroller in the gift shop is worthy of a complete evacuation of the building. We are stuck, useless audio guides hanging around our necks for 30 minutes while bomb sniffing dogs determine that the diaper bag hanging off the stroller contains nothing more potent than a bag of wipes and some stale Cheerios.So, now we are down to half an hour in one of my favorite museums. The kids are hot, tired and cranky and not in the mood to appreciate much of anything. We all do our best, but all too soon the tired and cranky guards start yelling at us to get out and get in the throng to board the last ferry to Manhattan. They will not let anyone sit on the lawn, of tour the gardens while we wait the ten minutes it takes for the ferry to come, but instead we huddle together on the hot concrete and grumble some more.
A complete boondoggle and the Hornblower Lines which mismanages these ferries now rank in my affections about as high as Air France. Score one though, for verisimilitude, as I doubt that the Ellis Island experience was very pleasant for Carl Daniels and his mother either. The fact that we were herded about and yelled at by angry people in uniform will help the children appreciate what their ancestors had to endure.
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