The History of American Immigration is so large and one of the actual more interesting topics while graduating at high school. Especially we have been discussing the American Dream a lot, which is symbolised in New York, where all people came with their hopes and fears to the New World in one spot - Ellis Islands. When going to Ellis Island you'll pass by the way the Statue of Liberty, just the biggest and most impressive statue in the world, i would guess.

 

So on Tuesday during our little city trip we went to see the Financial District and Lower Manhattan. After going to ground zero and hanging around a bit on Wall Street, we went further south to take the Ferry to Ellis Island. This was by far the most tourist crowded area we have seen. We bought some tickets for a ferry ride (18$), unfortunately the tickets to go up the statue of liberty were already gone.

Since they have only a limited number of tickets every day, one has to be really early, if you like to do that.

There was a massive queue to reach the ferry, which is guarded and protected with security on airport level. So we stood in the burning sun for almost 1h, (felt like 3) to finally get onto the ferry which can carry around 600 people. Just saying it was super busy!

There are different rides with the ferry so one can hop on and off a few times, we just took the normal route New York - Statue of Liberty - Ellis Island. One can indeed go to New Jersey as well.

The boat ride does not take long, you will always see the Statue on your way, nevertheless it's quite far away and one needs a professional camera to shoot the Lady at her best.

If you can't get a ticket up the statue it is not really enjoyable to get off that island, since there is nothing else to do and queues for next ferries are very long, so it can be that you wait for another hour just to get further to Ellis Island.

Ellis Island is a lovely small Island with the huge Immigration Building/Hall directly by the Harbour. You can read a lot about Immigration History and see the lists and books of ancient times. Then there are several movies shown in theatres on 2nd floor next to the famous registration Hall. We did not see any of them though.

Nevertheless it is quite impressive to see the island of tears, where the fate of millions of people was decided within a couple of minutes.

When you walk around Ellis Island you will have a fantastic view on Manhattans Skyline, furthermore there are some other small houses in same style as the immigration building, which are used for administration.