Up close to Lady Liberty, on the ferry in New York
i24NEWS ·
The 3 Minutes POP at sea, aboard the free ferry linking the Manhattan peninsula to Staten Island, "New York's fifth borough," which lets you get as close as possible to the Statue of Liberty without spending a dollar: "the most beautiful view of lower Manhattan," with the Freedom Tower that rose after the destruction of the Twin Towers, and Ellis Island, the former sorting center for migrants landing from the liners of Europe, now a museum. On the program, the story of the Statue of Liberty, a gift from France for the centennial of American independence, designed by Bartholdi and built by Gustave Eiffel: the torch appeared as early as 1876 at the Philadelphia world's fair, and the statue was inaugurated ten years later. A look back at the inscription on its base, Emma Lazarus's poem "The New Colossus," written in 1883: "send me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." On the way back, a glance at Governors Island, the former residence of the English king's envoys, turned military base, which hosted a Reagan-Gorbachev summit in the 1980s. The ferry runs every half hour, all year round, 24 hours a day, and 75,000 people ride it every day to get to work: best to go in the mid-afternoon or mid-evening. David Benaym's 3 Minutes POP in Benjamin Petrover's “C'été l'info”, i24NEWS in French, July 16, 2018.