New York, New York....it's a wonderful town!
Samantha and I had been keen to visit New York for ages and finally, here we were in the Big Apple.
What to do? So much to do and see!
We flew into JFK in the mid afternoon and after spending a while getting through US customs and getting our retina photographed and fingerprints taken for the US to ponder over at their leisure, we took a taxi into Manhattan.
We went past Flushing Meadow (US Open Tennis venue) and Shea Stadium (NY Mets Baseball) and lobbed at out hotel.
It was late afternoon and we needed to adjust to the new timezone so we decided to walk down to Times Square.
It's brilliant...well, at night. During the day it was fairly average, but well cool at night.
We wandered around there for a bit, checking out some shops including a massive Toys R Us which has a ferris wheel in the foyer!
The weather was fantastic in New York when we were there and the next day we caught the subway downtown and caught a ferry to Liberty Island to check out the Statue of Liberty.
Apparently you could climb right to the top in the past, but now, with added security, you can only go to a certain height. In any case, we decided not to worry about getting to the top and we instead chose to walk around the island and enjoy the views back across the river to Manhattan.
It's an amazing view!
Part of the same ferry trip entitles you to visit Ellis Island.
I wasn't greatly aware of Ellis Island but as often happens, this turned out to be one of the highlights.
Ellis Island is where thousands of European immigrants landed to begin a new life in USA.
The museum would have seen some amazing stories and it was truly inspirational to read about some of the stories of people travelling to live in New York and beyond.
The ceiling was fabulously tiled and overall, Ellis Island is very much worth travelling to.
We caught the ferry back from Ellis Island and wandered towards Wall Street. I have to say, the flag on the front of the Stock Exchange building is one of the largest flags i've ever seen and come to that, NYC has a serious amount of US flags., obviously indicating the massive amount of patriotism demonstrated since 911.
We briefly had a look at Ground Zero, which is a sad place, as we all know.
New York is a great place to walk around, despite what the taxi drivers tell you.
We walked to loads of places, including Tribeca, Little Italy, we visited one of the places I had always wanted to visit, CBGB's and Joey Ramone Place.
On a separate morning we caught the subway to near the Brooklyn Bridge and walked across.
This made it a very pleasant walk across the bridge to Brooklyn and offered some great views of Manhattan, Brooklyn and of course, some great photo opportunities.
Central Park is massive! There are some areas we had read that you wouldn't necessarily want to visit, but we had a wander around some parts of Central Park and all was good. One of the interesting places was Bethesda Fountain.
The fountain wasn't working as the pipes freeze in winter so they turn them off, but it was still interesting, especially as they had featured in Angels in America.
Another interesting place was near the Dakota Buildings, the apartments that John Lennon had lived, and ultimately died. It's a beautiful area and the Strawberry Fields garden was also beautiful.
Of course NYC is famous for tall buildings and we saw loads of them, including the Empire State Building. Incidentally, we wandered straight past this initially until I thought, hang on, that looks like....and it was.
We stayed for five nights in NYC and it was very cool. Towards the end of our stay, we went on a Sopranos Tour. For those who have lived in a bubble, The Sopranos is a mob show set in New Jersey. We like it anyway, so we had booked a tour and it was really good.
Not only did we get to venture to New Jersey, apparently called 'the Garden State'...??? but we also saw where they shoot some of the sections of The Sopranos.
Well worth it as was New York. A great city with loads to do and see.
We'll be back.