The City that never sleeps
After landing at JFK, it took us 2 hours to get through the rush hour traffic – bear this in mind when you’re looking at flights. We stayed at the New Yorker Hotel on 8th Ave corner of 33rd Street opposite Madison Square Garden. Our room on the 40th floor provided some great views.
We used the New York Pass which allows you to see 3,5 or 8 attractions and is well worth buying as it saves you money compared to visiting each place individually.
Friday saw us get the hop on/hop off bus to get our bearings of the city. We started in from Times Square and did both the south and north routes. We took the cruise around the Statue of Liberty and to over to Ellis Island.
On Saturday we walked over to 5th Avenue and went up the Empire State Building to the 87th floor via 2 lifts. The views over the city were incredible and you could really get a feel for the grid system that the city is laid out in. After this, we walked to Grand Central Station and had lunch at the famous Oyster Bar for lunch – no oysters for us although we did have some delicious scallops and crab. We walked our lunch off by walking over to do some window shopping at Tiffany's (and before anyone asks…no, we didn’t walk away with a famous little blue bag!) We then spent some time wandering around Times Square and taking in the sights.
My top tip from Sunday was getting the Metro to Brooklyn and then walking back across the Brooklyn Bridge. From there we walked over to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. Everyone is very respectful inside and it’s a very quiet building with so much memorabilia from such a tragic day.
On Monday we decided to take an Uber and visit the USS Intrepid Sea & Air Museum. We also took another cruise down Hudson River which took us under the five bridges around Manhattan. No trip to New York is complete without an afternoon of shopping in Macy’s and the other big department stores.
Tuesday took us take a walk to the Top of the Rock Building and up to the viewing platform – that way you can see the Empire State Building in all it’s glory as well. We also did the Radio City Music Hall Tour which was really interesting and just next door. We took the Metro to 72nd Street and stopped outside the building where John Lennon was shot and Yoko Ono still lives to this day. We then did an hour’s tour on an electric bike with a carriage around Central Park. The park is SO vast, this was an excellent and very informative guide seeing a lot of the sights.
Sadly, we flew home on Wednesday taking the 08.15 flight back to LHR which meant an 04.30am transfer back to the airport. We did find that our jet lag was greatly reduced doing this early flight.
If you’ve never been to New York, I can definitely recommend it – there is SO much to see and do, you could probably go several times and still not get bored!