New York
At the start of December, Teresa and I took a trip to New York. We booked the flights and hotel through BA, and flew out of Heathrow on Saturday, and got back to Heathrow the following week, giving us a full week in New York.
Our hotel was close to Grand Central Station, and that was our first visit on the Sunday morning when we were still on UK time and so woke up very early. It was nice to see the station with not too many people there – especially compared to some times later in the week when we were travelling in the rush hour! Even after visiting Grand Central Station, we were able to go to St Patrick’s church for the 7am service and then on to Times Square for breakfast where we had no trouble getting a seat in the Square to watch New York wake up.
We had a two day pass for the Big Bus tour, and so jumped on the bus at Times Square and travelled down to the south end of Manhattan where we picked up the Staten Island Ferry – to Staten Island. There was not a lot to see on Staten Island, but the reason for the trip was (a) that the Staten Island Ferry is free, and (b) that it goes past the Statue of Liberty and so gives a good view (provided you are on the right hand side of the boat going to the island, and on the left hand side coming back).
When we got back to Manhattan, we got on another tour bus and did a tour around Brooklyn, going over the Manhattan bridge, before returning to Times Square for a bit of a break before we repeated the bus trip when it got dark for a slightly different perspective.
On the Monday morning, we were again up early and so went for a walk, which ended up with us arriving at B&H Photo just before they opened. As I had lost the eyecap for my camera on route to Staten Island, and was having some issues with the ball head for holding my camera, we went in. Getting a new eyecap was easy. Sorting out the ball head and tripod issues took a little longer, but with some assistance from a very helpful assistant, we managed to get sorted with a new desktop tripod that my ball head would fit on – which worked very well later in the trip.
We then started our second day on the buses with a trip up to Central Park, where we got out and had a walk. I had not realised quite how big Central Park was, and how easy it was to get lost with a lot of paths, none of which appeared to be straight, and which seemed to go in random directions. At least when we got to the reservoir we were alright – just walking around the outside (about 1.5 miles) meant that we knew where we were going. We then got the bus back to Times Square where we managed to get tickets to see Cats at the Neil Simon Theatre before making our way, via Macy’s, to the Empire State Building where we had tickets to go up to the viewing platform as the sun was setting (well, as the sun was setting behind a bank of cloud). It was the first use of the new desktop tripod, which sat on the concrete wall with the camera pointing though the metal barriers to get a shot looking down towards the south end of Manhattan with One World Trade Centre and the Statue of Liberty in the distance. After an already long day, we then went to see Cats in the evening.
The main visit on Tuesday was to the 9/11 Museum. We got there via the subway – seeing Grand Central Station when it was a little busier than on Sunday morning. We spent much longer at the 9/11 site than we had expected, having thought that we would just be doing the 1 hour tour that we had booked. In the end, we stayed for at least another 3 hours after the tour had ended. Tuesday evening, after a bit of rest, we went to the Radio City Music Hall to the see the Christmas Spectacular. Radio City Music Hall is a huge theatre, seating over 6000 people, and was a great venue for the singing and dancing spectacular – complete with 3D glasses to see Santa flying from the north pole to New York.
On Wednesday we walked the High Line – an elevated walk along an old railway line. We had had mixed reviews of this before we went, and our view is that whilst this was called the High Line, it was not a highlight of our trip. Perhaps in the summer it would be a bit more lively and the plants would look nicer. Still, we had a very good breakfast of skillet cooked eggs and fruit salad.
Wednesday afternoon was the Rockefeller Centre – starting with a tour around the many buildings that form the centre and then a trip to the Top of the Rock – up to the top of the tallest building in the Rockefeller Centre. We had aimed to time our trip up the Rock with the sunset, but ended up going up earlier than we had planned. This meant a long wait for the sun to go down – when it was very cold. But we managed to stay up there until it got dark.
We had another early start on Thursday, getting the subway down to the Brooklyn Bridge and walking across the bridge to Brooklyn before too many people arrived. I had wanted to get a photo of the Empire State Building viewed through the Manhattan Bridge (which prior research had suggested was best taken from outside 65 Washington Street), and managed to get the shot. I also got some extra shots of the Brooklyn Bridge, but the shot I had hoped to take from Brooklyn Park with some pilings in the foreground looking over to the Manhattan skyline was a bit rushed as we had to get back to visit the Statue of Liberty, and so was not quite the shot I had hoped for. We then visited the Statue of Liberty – going up to the top of the pedestal but not up into the statue itself, and then onto Ellis Island where immigrants to the US were processed for many years. From here we got a nice view of the Statue of Liberty as the sun went down.
Our final day in New York started (again) with a nice breakfast before we walked up to the Frick Collection to see some art work (a lot of which case from UK and European based artists), before another walk in Central Park, a visit to the New York Public Library and then back to the hotel to get our bags and make our way to Newark airport (known by the code EWR as airport codes could not start with an N as these were reserved for the navy and so NEW was not available) to fly home.
