New York
Having flown into JFK and catching an iconic yellow taxi to our hotel, we stayed at the Best Western Hospitality House Apartments. The bedroom with living space and kitchen very spacious all on a 12-floor block. Great if you want an apartment in New York which is centrally located and not a high-rise building. The hotel was on the next block to the famous Waldorf Astoria!
One of the first things we did was a hop-on-hop-off sightseeing bus, the ticket lasted for 72 hours. There were three routes, plus a night tour. We did all three routes, two on the first day and one on the second and then used the bus to get around the city when needed. Unfortunately, we ran out of time to do the night tour. We did the Downtown Tour and Uptown Tour on the first day and the Brooklyn Tour on the second. Great way to see the city and get your bearings.
I would also recommend a street map when visiting the city. It is very easy to move around the city on foot, once you know what street or avenue you are on.
We of course took in a show on Broadway, The Lion King. An excellent show, we had pre-booked our tickets, however you can queue for tickets on the day of the show for a bargain. People start queuing hours before the box office opens in Times Square and depending if there is a matinee and evening performance depends on what time you can queue from. They only sell the matinee first. We had decided to pre-book our tickets with it being our first time to the city, so we could spend the time seeing the sights.
We started our second day by visiting one of the most famous buildings in New York, the Empire State Building. We decided to go early to avoid the queues and again we had pre-booked our tickets. There are two levels you can visit the 86th floor and the 102nd floor. We decided to do the 86th floor. The weather unfortunately wasn’t that good the day we had decided to go and was misty, however this didn’t spoil the experience of visiting this iconic building. The staff did advise us the views weren’t fantastic and we could come back if we wanted too later when the weather was hopefully improving but we decided to do it anyway. We were not disappointed the views were still good and lots of room to walk around outside on the 86th Floor. You first visit the 80th floor which tells you about how the building was built, then you catch the lift to the 86th floor. The lift to the 80th floor takes about 45 seconds!
We then decided to visit Ground Zero and pay our respects to this tragic event. We then did the third tour on the bus of Brooklyn.
My partner wanted to go to an authentic steakhouse, so we chose on the recommendation of the hotel to visit the steak house just around the corner from our apartment, Smith & Wollensky. Although this is an expensive steakhouse it was a lovely meal and well worth visiting for a special occasion. An interesting fact about the restaurant is the owner decided on the name by picking two names randomly from a phone book!
On our final full day, we had booked to go on a guided tour of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. This was a five-hour tour with a guide, we went for the first tour of the day, starting at 8:30am to catch the 9am ferry. We can recommend going for the earlier tour, this is a very popular place to visit in New York and people were queuing to buy tickets for the Ferry very early, again because we had pre-booked our tickets we just had to meet our tour guide. We decided to use the subway to get to Battery Park, very quick and cheap way to travel around the city. A one-way trip for us was approximately $3.00 each.
We really enjoyed this trip. Five hours sounds a long time to do a tour, however having the guide with us meant we got the best place on the boat to see the statue, all the interesting facts, and someone who would take pictures for you, meaning we could have some pictures together that weren’t just selfies or on our own! We had tickets to visit up to the Pedestal, up 197 steps (there is a lift if you would prefer) which gave us great views looking back to New York.
You can book to visit up the Crown, but these tickets are very limited, and we had decided that this time we were happy just visiting up to the pedestal. The ferry then takes you to Ellis Island for a quick tour and then back to mainland. Our tour finished approximately 1pm meaning we had the rest of the afternoon to explore some more of New York.
We visited Grand Central Station. Having a father who is interested in trains, this was one place I promised to visit for him. Very beautiful architecture.
My partner really loves sport, so we had booked to see a basketball game, a friendly between The Nicks and Brooklyn Nets at Madison Square Gardens. This was a great experience and I would recommend seeing a sporting event if you can while visiting New York.
On our final morning, we finally got around to do some shopping! We visited Macy’s department store at opening time, this was an experience as the doors open you are greeted by music and the staff all in line as you walk in dancing and clapping. Certainly, something I’ve never experienced in a department store!
We then walked to Central Park and arranged a horse drawn carriage ride outside the famous Plaza Hotel around a part of Central Park. What a lovely way to finish our visit to the city so good they named it twice!