Thursday, May 26, 2011

Ellis island

yet another picture from our NY trip.... hope you dont mind... :)
here we were on the jersey side, from where you have a beautiful view of manhattan... unless, as in our case, its very foggy!! this is in liberty state park, an enormous park that is by far not as crowded as manhattan. from there, you can take the ferry to the statue of liberty. you can also take ferry from battery park, in NYC, but i think its quite a bit less crowded taking it from this side...
above you see ellis island, in front of the manhattan skyscrapers. 12 million immigrants entered the US through the "golden door of ellis island" (i found that on this website; im just wondering whether there literally was a golden door? i can imagine it; some official standing there; "welcome to the united states of america! god bless america! welcome to the land of endless opportunities!!"). today, half of the american population are descendants of those 12 million immigrants....
this is another interesting website; you can enter names and find out whether they passed through ellis island (i typed in my last name, and found 22 people! i am just wondering if they mean with "residence" where they originally came from, or where they live now?)
thinking about it, i guess perhaps this golden gate was the golden M from mc donalds....?