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Published: August 15th 2006
Empire State Building
View from the ground.We decided to leave our truck at the longterm parking at Newark Airport and take the train into Manhattan. We were only going to be in the city for 3 days so we just packed light and only brought what we really needed and could carry with us.
When we arrived at Penn Station, we only had a few blocks to walk to our hotel. We stayed in a place on Lexington so it wasn't really that far to hoof it. We left almost immediately from the hotel to see the Empire State Building. We must have had some kind of luck because Thursday in the afternoon was the least busy time at this tourist site. We were able to just get up there in no time at all. It was an amazing site, the air was super clear and we could see for miles. I was able to even log a virtual geocache while we were up there.
We hung out on top for an hour or so, King Kong came out to visit while we were up there and after we had our fill, we headed back down. We decided to stop in the pub connected to
View South
View from above the building for a cool drink and some world cup soccer.
After hanging out at the pub for a while, we decided to get one more touristy thing in before dinner. We decided to head down to the water and see if we could get on a Circle Line tour or at least check out our options for it. Since we didn't know the subway or bus system (or the city layout for that matter) yet, we walked down there. I grabbed photos as we made our way through the city...typical NY news stand, hotdog vendor, big buildings, taxis and crowds. It was a decent walk and we didn't end up any where too scary.
Once we got down to the water, we found the Circle Line pier and started figuring out or options. Both of the tours we could do that night on the regular boat were pretty long and neither of us wanted to spend that much time on it. We also were kind of late in the afternoon so we didn't want to end up eating super late. We decided to the Circle Line's monster boat tour (a jet boat that gets you kind of
Lady Liberty
View from the boat wet). The boat wasn't too full so we were able to move around to the drier spots as the trip went a long. The boat had great music and a fun crew and boy did it move out...it was a lot of fun and we were still able to see all the sites we wanted to see. They stopped the boat near the Statue of Liberty so we could get some pictures of her and the skyline of the lower Manhatten area. You could see where the twin towers used to stand. It was an amazing view and a really fun trip.
After we returned, we decided to try out the bus to get back over to our hotel. It was much easier than expected (after we figured out that you couldn't use dollar bills). We ended up wasting a dollar on one bus because I had already put the change in the machine before he told me I couldn't use the dollar bill for the rest. Grrrrr!!!!!
On the bus ride, we rode through Time Square on 42nd and decided we would head back there to check it out in the evening and to have dinner. We
Night View of Time Square
Night scene of Time Square got back to the hotel without much walking and changed clothes and relaxed a bit. After about an 1/2 hour, we headed out to Time Square. We walked up to 42nd and then jumped a bus from there to save us a few blocks. It was cool to see all the lights, and tourists. It reminded us a bit of the WangFuJing area in Beijing. We took some photos and absorbed some of the atmosphere before heading to have some dinner.
We ate at a nondescript restaurant and watched some of the NBA finals. We did some more sightseeing afterwards in the same area and then headed back to the hotel for an early night since we knew we would be out and around all day the next day.
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HaHa
non-member comment
New York! New York
I want a bite of the big apple!