If you believe in Murphy's Law, then you'll understand how our day in New York turned out.
First of all, I left my telephone book at home with everyone's cell phone numbers in it. Luckly, I had Tracey's hotel number printed off from a past e-mail.
Our train pulled into Penn. Station around 11am and within minutes (after me waving a white piece of paper in the air as a signal) Jean, her daughter, Allison, Valerie, my sister and I, were greeted by BJ and a moment later Tracey. We had a lovely chat (while I'm still waving the paper in the air, to signal Rye - Christine) After 20 minutes of waving that paper and no chance of getting in touch with Christine by cell phone, we began walking to the exit and then my cell phone rang and it was Christine on the other end. Poor Christine had been waiting only a short distant away, but her vision was blocked by a large column and she couldn't see me waving the paper. We all had a good laugh and moved on.
We spent the next hour with Tracey and everyone chatted up a storm, just as if we had known one another for years. Our time together was much too short, but we did manage to get a few pictures for our scrap books.
After leaving Tracey, we had lunch at the "Heartland Brewery" so after calling our bank to see if we could second mortage the farm to pay for the bill, we hopped on the subway only to be headed in the wrong direction.
A half hour later we finally made it to Battery Park, where we were planning on catching the ferry over to Ellis Island. Only to find the line to get on the ferry was approx. 1/2 mile long with the folk waiting in the hot sun. Hmm, we all just looked at one another and shook our heads.
So after a trip to the book store, ice cream cart, and some pictures of Castle Garden we all hopped on the Statton Island Ferry and took a FREE cruise across the harbor. Then while we were cruising, a rain storm broke out. 
We plan on returning someday to make that visit Ellis Island, but next time as Jean suggested. We'll stay for a long weekend and maybe take in a Broadway show.
Even though I wasn't able to visit Ellis Island today, I was thrilled to be able to spend some time at Castle Garden which was the port of entry, for my gg gf Matthew Morning in 1883.
Regards
Marilyn
... did they have copies of TS's hottest books "SCOTTISH FAMILY TREE DETECTIVE" and
!! I like yours and have copied and saved it already! Just to let everyone from yesterday know that I'm safely back home this afternoon and hope everyone else had safe journeys in returning to their homes too. Thanks to Marilyn for all her hard work in coordinating with everyone and getting us to NYC in the first place, thanks to BJ for her tourguide advice that really did get us to the place we wanted to be eventually, thanks to Christine for the authentic accent of the day 
) and thanks to Valerie and Allison for putting up with us TS genealogists in the first place! See you all next time..............