The penultimate day of our trip was spent in a close look at one of the most representative monuments of the city, the Statue of Liberty.
Located on Liberty Island at the mouth of the Hudson River from New York, this statue is 46 meters (96 from the base to the tip of the torch) welcomed all immigrants from Europe since 1886, the year France gave the statue to commemorate the first anniversary of the declaration of independence from the U.S. and as a symbol of friendship between both nations.
In fact, as a curiosity, the statue is not looking toward Manhattan as I and many thought before you go, but is oriented towards Europe.
To get there, you have to take one of the ferries that go along with Castle Clinton in Battery Park, where we can get the tickets if we have the New York Pass. I recommend
early, because otherwise the queue to board can be a bit heavy, and that it is only the first of all queues that will have to wait to visit the statue.
This was one of the biggest disappointments of the trip. I thought the statue was most spectacular, that his visit was necessary, so that among the gray, rainy day and it took us almost 2 hours to get into "thank you" to the excessive and paranoid security measures, ended up making this one of the worst experiences of New York .
For me the most interesting of the visit is the actual statue itself, to observe it from different places in the small island of freedom in which it is raised, but what I have said, that day it rained, so we directly to the museum at the base of the statue.
To summarize a bit, we had to spend 3 comprehensive security controls, higher than the airport. Not allowed to enter with backpacks, food or water, so you have to leave everything (the camera if you let it pass) on a ticket that does not work very well but are technologically very advanced, because they have delayed opening up and can not be reopened in an interval of 15 minutes.
After a first inspection of documents in which even the guard was asking questions about why you were going to see the statue, where you were ... pass to another control that you must remove your belt, shoes .... how at the airport, but with the difference that you both look very closely that it took almost an hour to pass the second control!
And the last and most incredible, is a machine on which you walk barefoot raise your arms and you begin to release jets of compressed air, as if they had just let out of a biological laboratory and you could be contaminated.
After all this and just hand over the entrance is another guard and finally enter the museum in the statue!
Well, not if it was for those 2 hours lost to the folly in controls that I conditioned the rest of the visit, I found an interesting little museum which tells the story of the statue in a few panels and models .
The time to visit the museum: 15 minutes.
Most interesting was to see the original torch replaced in 1986, and which until 1916 could be accessed by paying 50 cents.
From the museum located on the pedestal of concrete stairs that go up to the viewpoint of the base of the statue, the highest point that could be visited at Christmas 2008, as access to the crown remained closed for several years.
At the end of the stairs and before going outside gazebo pedestal, looking up, we can see the inner structure of the statue, designed by Gustave Eiffel.
Al be raining and windy day, we could not watch the views of the harbor and Manhattan Skyline of the city, so I left the camera well protected in the shelter when we took a lap on the pedestal.
From here and after a very productive visit, we took the bags and stuff the box office and went in search of the ferry that would bring us closer to the nearby Ellis Island, where we would see the museum of immigration.
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