As promised, here are the tales of my trip to New York, and there’s even some pics to go along with it. Although I did take the camera on a couple of days, most of the time I was busy playing tourist and gawping at stuff, far to busy to take photos of it!
We had an afternoon flight from Heathrow which was good because we landed at JFK at 7.30pm so it was early enough to go out and do something in the evening. We got a cab from the airport to our hotel, got checked in and unpacked, the decided to head out for a walk. We spent a couple of hours walking around the streets and stopped off for a snack at a Mexican place because we didn’t really want to bother with a full meal.
On our first full day, we were up reasonably early and decided to go and pound the streets a bit more, this time in the opposite direction. We stopped for coffee and to devise a plan, then went and got 7-day passes for the subway which would help us get to all the places we wanted to see.
In the afternoon, we had booked a Circle Line cruise for 3hrs around Manhattan which was great - the guide was extremely knowledgeable and told us a lot of stuff the guide books never have room for. We went past this and this as well as this, and realised that the sea was that way!
After the boat trip, we headed back towards the hotel and went walking again, in search of a bar. I have to confess we weren’t too successful when it came to finding bars, very strange given ‘im indoors’ skills at detecting beer! Anyway, we found one and beers were consumed.
The next day we walked from the hotel up towards Columbus Circle and Central Park, and found some rather old rocks to look at as well as lots of trees.
In the afternoon we had booked to go to the Rockefeller Centre and the Top of the Rock, from which it is indeed a long way down!
The next day, we had pretty much nothing planned so we headed down to Chinatown where there were a huge number of people around, squawking their litany of “handbag, rolex, handbag, rolex?” trying to sell fake designer goods. It was very busy down there and to be honest the crowds were so dense it was quite difficult to walk so we headed up a side street and found a small park where there was a Chinese band playing something quite soothing. We listened to them for a while (and consulted the street map) before heading back towards the thronging masses.
A little detour took us from Chinatown to Little Italy where there was a huge street fair for the feast of San Gennaro - more crowds but at least this time there was pizza and cheap red wine!
After an afternoon of walking around, we went back to the hotel for a rest and then headed out in search of food. This time it was Maui Tacos, a strange combination but very good, and there were cocktails too so that wasn’t a bad thing. We headed off for some more walking, this time down to the Flatiron Building to look at the very peculiar construction, and of course just as we got there, 'im indoors managed to sniff out a bar. A few drinks later, we headed back out again, having realised that the Empire State Building was still open at 1am and people were up there photographing the city lights.
The following day, we went to Woodbury Common for most of the day, which I have to say was a complete waste of time. Still, it gave him a chance to further indulge his love of junk food with Philly cheesesteak. More bar-hunting ensued, and we ended up at the Houndstooth Pub where we spent a very pleasant evening chatting to the Russian barmaid and a couple of guys who were on a bachelor party but the groom had already been packed off home! One of the guys is a soldier, deploying to Afghanistan later this month, he gave us his email address and we’ve been chatting on MSN a bit since then.
What else did we do? We pottered around on the subway, picking a line and randomly getting off at various points to see what there was to see! Greenwich Village was on the list, and a very pleasant lunchtime in Washington Square Park. It was interesting just to wander around some residential areas for a change, and the leafy streets were quite a change from the bustle of the city. We also headed down to Battery Park to look at the memorials, and the Staten Island Ferry which was another opportunity for messing about on the water.
All too soon it was time to pack up and go home, my final day’s treat was a trip to Barnes & Noble to stock up on reading material - I usually go there with a list of books that I want which aren’t out in softcover in the UK for quite a while. Besides, I had a 70kg luggage allowance to make the most of!
We had lunch and a few beers in the Heartland Brewery, trying out some of their brews and kind of looking forward to being back home where we know how to find all the good pubs!
So, there you are, my little trip to your side of the Pond. Have at it!
Happy Monday all!
Cannot see your personal pics, boofae cause work has the site blocked. But it sounds like you had a good time trapsing around the big apple. I did the river cruise when I was in high school and found it very interesting.