Advertisement
Published: February 16th 2009
The Empire State Building
Us on the 87 floor, overlooking New York.Greetings from the Good Old US of A.
Stephen and I arrived in New York on the 4th Feb and the weather was chilly. We have taken the opportunity to explore New York City over the past few days.
Our hostel is located in Central Park West, just a few metro stops away from everything. We started our New York experience with a typical breakfast - Bagels and tea. We then headed to the Empire State Building; it is currently the tallest building in the city. We have already found a positive to travelling in winter, there was no waiting in line to head up the top. We’re told that in summer waiting can be up to 3-4 hours. From there it was time to explore Manhattan and walk a little. We came across Madison Square Gardens and Hershey’s World, M&M World (which was load of fun) and the New Years Eve ball at Times Square.
Our second day was a long one. We headed downtown to see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. This took us most of the day. To board the ferry across we went through airport style security, then to get into the
Liberty complex we went through security again. We made our way up the 156 steps to the first and only lookout from just below her feet. Did you know that the Statue of Liberty was made by the same man who did the Eiffel Tower - Mr. Eiffel? Lady Liberty is so big. It was very cool seeing her.
From there we hopped on another ferry to Ellis Island. For those who don’t know Ellis Island was an immigration processing station from 1924 to 1956, it was purpose built to handle 5,000 people a day. Over the years of operation it processed over 15 million people from all over the world. It was a very interesting place and well worth the visit next time you’re here. From there we headed to Wall Street where we saw the Charging Bull or Wall Street Bull. The sculpture depicts a bull, the symbol of aggressive financial optimism and prosperity, leaning back on its haunches and with its head lowered as if ready to charge. We also saw the New York Stock Exchange from the outside, like so many things in New York, as they have restricted or no access to the public
Stephen, Lady Liberty and I
It was very cold as you can see by our layers. A lovely minus 4, must push through though. at all. Our guide book spends a lot of time saying before 9/11 you could do this, but now you can’t. It’s a little frustrating but the world is a changing place. By that time anyway it was time to head back to the hostel to get ready - Stephen and I were off to see Mary Poppins on Broadway. Oh how Stephen spoils me! We saw about five shows in 6 months in London in the West End and now a show on Broadway. I was very excited. It was really good as it was an adaption from the book (which was written by an Australia) and the movie. There were more songs in the show than the movie; we found out 32 songs were written for the movie but they only used 14. Bert was also played by an Australian actor.
The next day we walked the few blocks from our hostel to the National History Museum. It was fantastic. The dioramas as Stephen calls them were amazing. You felt so close. The Dinosaurs were amazing, the blue whale was amazing. It was all amazing and we later found out that the movie Night at the Museum
was inspired by the Natural History Museum in New York. We took our time and spent a few hours exploring all the different floor and areas. Our next location was to be the Guggenheim Museum and Central Park. We crossed the park in daylight so no need to worry anyone and made our way to the very impressive building - the Guggenheim Museum. Since it was our last night in New York we had decided to see it by night from the Top of the Rock - Rockefeller Centre. Since it wasn’t quite dark yet we needed to kill some time, so we headed to Ben and Jerry’s to try some local fare. Oh my GOD, I had Choc Chip Cookie Dough and Choc Fudge Brownie flavours and Stephen had Choc Chip Cookie Dough and Triple Caramel Chunk. It comes very close to the best ALL time ice-cream experience. There aren’t any photos it didn’t last long enough!! After this out of body experience we headed up The Top of the Rock. The views were amazing - as far as the eye could see there were lights. It was actually better than the Empire State Building because you had no
M&M World
Look at all those colours. And they had three more walls! wire cage to stop the view. Anyway I am sure that the photos speak for themselves.
It was a great finish to our New York experience; tomorrow we board a train for 8 hours to get to Niagara Falls, Canada.
Thinking of you all.
Love Michelle and Stephen.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.103s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 8; qc: 52; dbt: 0.0496s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
