We took the bus from Philadelphia to New York on Friday 20th September, arriving in the afternoon. From the bus station we then took the subway to the Air BnB I had booked. Our 1-bedroom apartment was awesome. It was right in the middle of Chinatown in Lower Manhattan, surrounded by cheap Chinese restaurants and funky little bars, with stations for several different subway lines within a few minutes walk. It was extremely good value for its location, possibly because it was a fourth floor apartment without an elevator... That didn't bother Will and I, even with our 23kg bag each, we just viewed it as bonus exercise!
Chinatown was fascinating, it really did feel like we were visiting my brother in Hong Kong (although his previous apartment there was a fifth floor walk-up!).
It was a pretty cold and wet evening so that night we grabbed a Chinese take-away from the restaurant right next to our apartment building, and a few craft beers from a grocery store just round the corner, and had a nice cozy Friday night in, watching some old Pokemon cartoons on Netflix which had been left logged in by previous occupants of the apartment.
On Saturday we walked the 20 minutes or so to the 9/11 Memorial. It has been very very well done, although a sobering experience to wander around. There was a heavy presence of heavily armed anti-terrorist squad police walking around the memorial plaza.
The memorial features two huge waterfalls and reflecting pools, set within the footprint of the original twin towers. The names of the nearly 3000 victims are inscribed around the outside. On what would have been their birthday, a rose is placed on their name.
The tree below is known as the '
Survivor Tree' as incredibly, it managed to survive the attacks.
The new One World Trade Center towers above the memorial site. It was completed in 2013 and is the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, and the sixth-tallest in the world.
We didn't go through the 9/11 museum, which is the sloped building below. We hadn't bought tickets in advance, and as you can see, the queue was pretty horrendous.
The interesting white building you can see below is the brand new Westfield, World Trade Center. It only opened in August this year. It is certainly not a dull design for a vast shopping mall!
We then left the World Trade Center area behind and made our way to the
High Line. This is an elevated 1.45 mile long linear park, built on an old disused freight railway line on Manhattan's West Side, in the trendy Meatpacking District. I had wanted to visit this park ever since reading about it in a travel supplement back in NZ. We accessed the park at the point below. Check out the orange and black McLaren! It would have been worth some serious coinage...
I loved the park, Will and I walked the whole length of it. It is just the type of thing I like to do when visiting cities...
Being elevated, you got a different perspective of the city.
The park was also full of interesting works of art. "Sleepwalker" by Tony Matelli, below, was rather freaky. You had to get very very close to it before you were convinced that it wasn't actually a real person.
We walked to the end of the High Line near the Hudson Railway Yards. Close to this was the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center which I thought was an amazing building.
After grabbing a quick bite to eat, we then headed to Times Square.
We had walked around the Broadway area earlier in the day.
I would have loved to have been able to go see "
Hamilton" on Broadway, but had to make do with just walking past the theatre. It is the hottest ticket in town, and currently sold out until at least April next year.
Time Square at night is a whole different beast. We hauled ourselves up to the top of the grandstand and enjoyed the neon billboard show and a spot of people-watching.
Then it was time for a train home, tired after a big day out.
Sunday was another full day of sightseeing. I had booked online ferry tickets to Liberty Island to visit the Statue of Liberty, so it was a reasonably early start in order to walk to the ferry terminal at Battery Park on the most southern point of Manhattan. After passing through rigorous security, we boarded the ferry for a very windy sailing over to the island. Below is my best wild and wind-swept look!
We got great views of the statue as we approached the island.
Our tickets allowed us to walk several flights of stairs up to the top of the pedestal. You can see the people in the look-out area just below the start of the green copper. You can get tickets to get right up into the crown, but these sell out well in advance. To give an example, the next available tickets with crown access are for 9th January 2017! Now I'm organised, but not THAT organised!!!
Once we had admired the view to our heart's content, we spent quite a while wandering around the very good and very informative museum. There they have the original torch on display.
Liberty island is very small so it didn't take us long to wander around. There were nice views looking back towards Manhattan.
And obviously we needed a selfie in front of the statue itself!
After a couple of final pics it was time for the ferry back to Manhattan. We could have got off at Ellis Island and spent some time exploring the immigrant inspection facility, but neither of us were overly interested. Time was short and we had plenty more we wanted to do back in Manhattan.
Next up on our sightseeing adventure was Central Park. I LOVED this place! It is huge at well over 800 acres, and provides a valuable area of green space and wilderness. It's a lovely respite from the frenetic city centre.
Central Park is one of the most filmed locations in the world, and I recognised parts of it, like the boating lake, from various movies.
Here are a few more pics.
Will then went and had a couple of hours at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art. I know the MET is considered one of the best art galleries in the world, but I wasn't really in the mood for it... Instead I joined the crowds of people hanging out on the steps and enjoyed the buskers for a while, before returning to Central Park and going for another long walk.
Will met me once the museum closed and we went for a final walk around some of the paths. We came across a guy who was feeding raccoons (which I'm sure you aren't meant to do!). They were literally pouring out of the bushes and over a low concrete wall in order to get to the food, climbing all over each other in the process. There must have been at least 30 of them, it was quite a sight!
From Central Park we then walked to our final destination for the evening: The Rockefeller center, as I had bought tickets online for the
Top of the Rock.
I had done a bit of research as to what was the better observation deck in NYC, the Rockefeller or the Empire State Building. The majority of people seemed to prefer the Rockefeller, with the main reasons being that you get to view from an outdoor observation deck, and you also get to actually admire the Empire State Building as part of the skyline. We had a magical time, admiring the lit-up skyline from 260 metres above street level. With several observation decks over three floors there was plenty of space for everyone. It never felt crowded, and we were able to stay up the top for as long as we wanted.
So that was the end of our long weekend in New York City. I really enjoyed the place, even more than I thought I would. Monday morning we caught a flight from Newark Airport to our final destination in the United States: Boston.
