Downtown, Uptown

We got an early start yesterday morning. We had big plans. First, Ground Zero, then on to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. We took the subway down to the World Trade Center. When we got off the subway and came up, the first thing we saw was Ground Zero. Immediately there was something in the air - I can't really describe how it felt, but I think you can imagine. We were walking around trying to find a viewing site of Ground Zero because currently it is fenced off and makeshift wooden walls are behind the fence. You can't see anything from the street except cranes and construction. Unfortunately we couldn't find the viewing site, but we did find the 9/11 Memorial Preview site. It's a small leased office space with the 9/11 story, a memorial to what happened that day and a layout of what the site will eventually look like.
It felt so strange listening to a mother explain to her young child what this place was. She told him that some bad men crashed airplanes into buildings and a lot of people got hurt that day. The child asked how many. "Almost 3,000," she said. It is a story we will tell generation after generation. It was incredibly sombering, but I was reminded once more of why we send our men overseas to fight terrorism. To keep us safe and to never let this happen again.
We made our way down to Battery City Park where we would catch our ferry to Ellis Island. On the way we passed a fire station. There was a giant brass mural on the side of their building as a memorial to all their men that were lost that day. I can't imagine being a part of something like that. It must have been so unreal.
We made it to Battery City Park. From the park we could see Lady Liberty. It was a beautiful, sunny day. The perfect kind for sight seeing. We stood in a long security line to get on the ferry. It was airport type security. We had to remove anything metal and put it through a scanner and then walk through a metal detector. It took quite a while. Soon enough we were all crowded onto the ferry and arriving at Liberty Island. To be that near to the statue was quite amazing.  I have to be honest, though. It wasn't as big as a lot of movies make it look. Don't get me wrong, it's huge. But the way it's depicted in movies, it seems like it's as big as the Empire State Building. Yeah....not quite. We spent about an hour there, walking around the island and capturing different views of the statue and the city with our camera.
Soon after, we were on the move to Ellis Island which is a quick boat ride from Lady Liberty. Ellis Island was incredible. So much of our history revolves around the people who came through that place. We could have spent all day there. Immediately, Andrew and I started using their database to search for our relatives who passed through long ago. My dad's family, the Kefgens, came through. As did Andrew's family, the Rechichis. I searched and searched but came up empty handed with the family name my dad had given me. I was disappointed, but it was still very exciting to be standing in the same place they came to many years before. Andrew found his Great Grandparents' names in the computer database as well as on the stone wall outside. That was really exciting for him. I decided to search on the stone wall one last time to see if I could find any names. The name my dad had given me was Frederic Wilhelm Koppchen. The original spelling of Kefgen was Koepfgen (right dad?). When the Kefgens came through Ellis Island, the spelling got mixed up and changed, so it was possible that it was recorded incorrectly. I came across a Carl Friederich Wilhelm Koeppen. Pretty close...I'm not sure if this person is related to me at all, but just in case, I took a picture with his name along with the other Koeppens who came through Ellis Island.
By the time we were finished searching, it was about 4:30pm. We had spent almost the entire day learning about American history. Pretty exciting when you are learning right at the source of the history. We made our way back Uptown to Chelsea. I had found a Venezuelan restaurant called El Cocotero that had gotten rave reviews on Yelp. It sounded so amazingly delicious and I couldn't wait to eat there. When I was in Venezuela, we ate traditional Venezuelan food, but I'm going to go ahead and call it the poor man's Venezuelan food. After all, we were living as missionaries. We weren't exactly eating gourmet. I remember liking what I ate, but we all grew very tired of eating the same thing all the time. I think this is what we would have eaten if we were "eating well" all the time. It was the same traditional food that I ate all the time, empanadas, arepas and tajadas (fried sweet plantains). The difference was in the fillings of the empanadas and the arepas. They were just heavenly. Slow cooked chicken and beef with cilantro, cheese, black beans, tomatoes, plantains, Venezuelan cheese....oh so yummy! I was kind of hoping the waitress would have been a little more friendly so that we could have chatted in Spanish about Venezuela a bit, but she didn't really seem interested in making small talk so I left it alone. Oh well, their food was still amazing. I think I will have to recreate what I ate in my own kitchen at home.
Andrew and I were stuffed, but didn't really know what to do next. We were too full for dessert or drinks so we decided to go back to our hotel. We relaxed after our long day and got caught up with Dexter. By the time we had finished the 2 episodes it was pretty late. Too late for dessert, even in NY. We kept searching for dessert places and found many but none of them were open. Bummer!! We finally gave up and just walked down to the Duane Reade (a drugstore) and grabbed some Oreos. Hopefully we can find some dessert tonight!