New York

No trip to the US can be complete without a visit to New York. Even though it is on the east coast and takes about 5 hours from Las Vegas, I wanted to visit it to tick it off my list. It will be a long time before I'll be heading back to the US because of the uncertainties in the elections.

Our hotel was close to Times Square. At midnight, all the screens sync and played an animation of lotus flowers. It was very enjoyable to watch but also very tiring. One of the roving photographers took a snap of me looking bored and sleepy as I waited for the stroke of midnight and asked if we would be interested in buying the snap. I was amused that it was so different from the expressions of the people around us. They were excited and full of life and I was... bored?

We only had about 2 days in New York so it was vital to cover as many famous places as possible. Gaz had been here before so he was in the know and led us confidently around. We went to the green lung of the city, Central Park. There is a scene in Sex And the City where the lake was featured.

The Metropolitan Museum, but it was closed on the day.

Grand Central station. It is such a large place and too posh to be a public transport hub. It is close to One Vanderbilt, an office building and observatory tower which is where we went to next.

View from Summit One Vanderbilt of Central Park. The building is built on Vanderbilt Avenue named after the Vanderbilt family who reportedly made their fortune from shipping and rail roads and was once one of the richest families in America. They built Grand Central station located nearby and has an underground connection to One Vanderbilt.

Summit One Vanderbilt is not only an observatory tower, it also has a couple of floors full of things to do like a room full of silver balloons, a fully mirrored room with differing sizes of silver balls on the floor, several glass edge that allows customers to take fun pictures of themselves and the street below.

Continuing with the SATC theme, the library where Carrie had her wedding.

The next day, we took the free Staten Island Ferry to catch a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty.

Here it is, a gift from France to US.

We queued up for last minute tickets to watch a Broadway show. We saw Back to the Future. It was fantastic and we saw a few of the people we queued up with earlier in the morning. I had thought it would be a mismanagement of our time to get the tickets, but around $20 each and about an hour of queuing, it was worth the great experience of a night out in Broadway for theatre lovers as ourselves. Normal price for the tickets were $100.

 New York was an interesting place and it is everything I expected and more. It was loud, noisy, rude, full of lights and rubbish by the roadside. But some people were nice and we found a nice chinese restaurant that serves Cantonese food (it was such a comfort we went there twice in two days).

The subway was a force to reckon with. It was like a rabbit warren of tunnels that lead to every end of the city. Some underground stations had 3 or 4 levels of train platforms. It was loud and often dirty, some people were sketchy but mostly everyone had very clean shoes even though the streets were dirty with use. 

I think there is no where quite like New York and I'm glad we were there.