Trip Out East

We headed into NYC and for my first time, it was pretty wondrous to be in the forest of skyscrapers. We went down to Battery Park and got into line for the Ellis Island/Statue of Liberty Ferry. The lines were not that bad, but we were tempted with hot dogs and a large pretzel for lunch. (The pretzel was a bit stale.)

We decided not to visit the Statue but saw her on the Ferry. It seemed smaller in real life but it was still pretty amazing. I tried to image being an immigrant and seeing her for the first time. This was a powerful symbol.
Next stop: Ellis Island. The museum is great. The lower half has exhibits but we really enjoyed the upper floor with large registry room and smaller rooms filled with exhibits about the immigrant experience as they went through Ellis Island. All of it was fascinated. I could image being a very scary place to go through, especially if you did not know English.

After Ellis, we headed up Manhattan to stay with friends for the night. They took us out to dinner at a local Chinese place which was first rate. Then to a movie, Rescue Dawn, a film that opened before the rest of the country, which is a bonus being in NYC.

I always promised myself that if I ever was in the NYC area, I would visit FDR’s home at Hyde Park. So, off we went. Unfortunately, it did take longer than we thought, so we could not spend enough time there, nor visit other places in the Hudson Valley. However, we took a tour of the house (again smaller than I thought), then walked through the museum.

The museum is housed in the FDR Presidential Library, the first of the modern Presidential Libraries, and the only one used by a sitting President. FDR designed it himself. We did have time to visit the gift shop. As always I head to the books, since I have been building a presidential biography library for years now. I had my eyes out for 3 or 4 books that I needed to fill and since they were out of print, the store did not have them. Bummer. I did find out about a new biography on him, and I got that at a later date. We headed back to Pennsylvania in time for dinner.

On Saturday, we went into Princeton. Since Myla had a baby shower, I hit the bricks for more history. I stopped at the Princeton Historical Society, and then I walked around Princeton University. I saw Nassau Hall where the Continental Congress met and Prospect House where Woodrow Wilson stayed as President of the college. The college added a tacky 1960s glass room on the back of the house which did not fit the surrounding architecture but what else is new…Then I walked into the Firestone Library (Ohio connection…) I could not walk into the stacks since I was not a student, which ticked me off , but I found myself in Special Collections where they had a cool exhibit on mapping Africa 1500s-Present. Did you know that it was only in 2004 that someone hiked the Nile from beginning to end? Well, that is the brief story. We had a good time and look forward to the next visit out East.

--Bryan