What I did was get off the ferry at Liberty Island, walk very briskly round it, stopping occasionally to read the signs with interesting information and to squint up at the statue, thinking the things you think like "My, it's big", and "Of course it has to be hollow - why didn't I think of that?" and so on.
I got back on to the same ferry (well, I ran, and they saw me running and waited nicely) and got to Ellis Island.
None of my ancestors come through Ellis Island (I looked up people-with-my-surname on the computer, and found fewer than 20 of them) but I found it an interesting museum to go round nevertheless - in particular, I appreciated what I thought of as the "bigotry wall" - with all the news clippings and songs and pictures and so on, clearly demonstrating that for decades, for well over a century, American immigrants who have been living in the US for even a generation longer than the newcomers, will say pretty much exactly the same things about the newcomers as the people a couple of generations up the line said about them.
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I got back on to the same ferry (well, I ran, and they saw me running and waited nicely) and got to Ellis Island.
None of my ancestors come through Ellis Island (I looked up people-with-my-surname on the computer, and found fewer than 20 of them) but I found it an interesting museum to go round nevertheless - in particular, I appreciated what I thought of as the "bigotry wall" - with all the news clippings and songs and pictures and so on, clearly demonstrating that for decades, for well over a century, American immigrants who have been living in the US for even a generation longer than the newcomers, will say pretty much exactly the same things about the newcomers as the people a couple of generations up the line said about them.