New York, New York

---

Manhattan Island really is the centre of the universe. Arriving late at night, we caught the train in from JFK and it looks like the whole city is under a spotlight from a distance. We take a cab from the glorious central station to our downtown hotel and are instantly reminded by our driver of the tipping protocols in New York. We stayed at the Hilton Millenium located right on Ground Zero. Our 17th floor room overlooked the huge ground zero sight and after 9 years, its hard to believe they are still escavating and clearing. The sheer size of the site is overwhelming. One of the reasons I liked the downtown area was its proximity to two of my favourite New York sites, the financial district, where so much wealth creation and destruction occurs every day and the beautiful City Hall where Deputy Mayor Mike Flaherty dished out his awesome one-liners.

After seeing the size of the lines weaving around Battery Park to get the boat to Liberty Island, we took a different tact of using the Circle line tour from 42nd street, a 3 hour boat tour that as the name indicates, circles Manhattan Island. We head south from 42nd, admiring the empire state building and financial district buildings before looking over to Jersey to see the emerging buidings including the huge Goldman Sachs headquarters. We pass under the Brooklyn Bridge on as we go round the southern tip of the island before passing the United Nations building and the Mayors house before the north half of the island which was pretty dull and Harlem certainly has a different feel to the lower half of the island. We also passed Yankee Stadium and the Bronx.

Back on land we checked out the meatpacking district including the recently completed High line sky park. The high line sky park is built on an abandoned rail line, originally built in the 1930s to lift dangerous freight trains off the streets of New York. Now it has lawn and deck chairs and people were out sunbaking on this glorious spring day. From there we went to check out the spring cherry blossoms of Chelsea, a very classy neighbourhood for the rich and famous. That night we ended up in the upper west side at a Mexican bar with some damn strong margiritas which was pretty much the end of me.

The next day was something differnt as we visited family out in Greenwich, Connecticut, an amazing part of the world where the mega rich live. Perfectly manicured lawns, rose gardens and huge double story mansions are the theme of these streets as we had lunch with some bankers who had seen some pretty big deals and made plenty of dough in the process.

After being chauffered back to Manhattan Island we hit the Top of the Rock, a very well done observation deck at the top of the Rockerfeller Centre which gives you great 360 degree views of Manhattan and makes you realise how big Central Park is, how bright Times Square is and how crazy the idea of walking the Statue of Liberty to Times Square was in Ghostbusters 2. It then got properly dark and we checked out the lights of Times Square and Broadway before landing at a really cool piano bar in the upper east side where we drank the night away.

The next day we did the walk over Brooklyn Bridge, but the bridge is so huge, we were too tired to explore Brooklyn, instead finding time to check out the 5th avenue Easter parade and much to my liking all the big shops were closed. It was a glorious day so we headed to Central Park and walked up to strawberry fields where we find people with acoustic guitars playing Beatles songs which is pretty cool. We head back walking past heaps of cool sights, from Madison Square Garden to Radio City to countless others, we run out of time in New York, but its a city that we hope to get back to at some point.

---

Photos

The financial district
Greed is good

Ground Zero site
View from our hotel room

View from the Top of the Rock
The Empire State Building directly in front

Central park
Thousands of people in the park on a sunny day