Advertisement
The Finanical District Skyline
Taken from north of the reservoir in Central ParkI'm playing catch up with these travelblogs as I've left New York, partied in New Orleans and am currently sunning myself in Miami Beach. Anyway...
New York was great and we managed to see and do most of the things we wanted to in a short space of time. If I go back there then I'd use the time to wander around some of the areas that I didn't see and just take in the place a little more. I'm glad that we went to most of the tourist attractions, but a little more time to kick back and relax would have been nice.
Our hostel was in the Upper West Side and it was a little too close to Harlem for my liking. The walk from the subway to the hostel was through a housing estate; I felt similar to Bruce Willis when he had to walk through Harlem with the sandwich board on in 'Die Hard With A Vengeance'! That said, we didn't experience one bit of trouble or attitude in our time there and the people that we spoke to were all pretty friendly and helpful. The hostel itself was ok, although it was much more
Central Park
at the South of the park impersonal than the previous places.
After checking our bags in to the hostel we walked through most of Central Park (about 45 blocks). Joggers everywhere! We saw Dakota, the house where John Lennon lived, and died. There is a tribute to him very near the house in Central Park that is called Strawberry Fields. The Great Lawn is a dog-free grassed area where people were sunbathing and playing baseball. We could spot the Brits a mile off because they were the only people playing football!
Other sights on that first day included Grand Central Station, the (outside of the) Rockerfeller Center and the nighttime walk down Broadway into Times Square.
The second day started with a visit to the site of the World Trade Center. Enough time had passed for it to be quite quiet and the tributes and flags etc were pretty much all gone. Wall Street and the New York Stock Exchange building were similarly quiet, although the Staten Island ferry was busy. We got a great view of the Manhattan skyline from the ferry as well as the Statue of Liberty, which you can't go up these days because of security concerns. After the
Brooklyn Bridge
my legs were killing me by this point! ferry we got the subway into Brooklyn and walked back to Manhattan over the Brooklyn Bridge. As far as bridges go, it was a nice one! A few beers and a pizza rounded off a long day.
On our last day we visited the Empire State Building. I'm determined to do a skydive later on my trip, but I'm still not getting any more comfortable with heights! The views from the ESB were magnificent, although you couldn't really make out much of Central Park and what you could see was just treetops. It was worth the 90 minute queue. We then saw Madison Square and the mighty Unites States Post Office building. By this time we had worked up an appetitie that was more than satisfied by our visit to Katz's Deli in the Lower East Side. It's a famous Jewish eatery, probably held in similar esteem as Brick Lane Beigels is in London. It's also the place where Harry first met Sally (although I haven't seen the film!).
Wer got a flight to New Orleans the next day, but that's a story for the next blog.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.302s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 15; qc: 75; dbt: 0.0929s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.4mb
