The Big Apple
Having packed the night before, evangeline2670 and I caught the coach to Heathrow, checked in (after some frantic repacking to get her suitcase under the 23kg limit XD) made it through security and boarded our Virgin Atlantic 747 for the 7 hour 40 min flight to JFK. Spent the flight watching various movies on the inflight entertainment and just chilled. Landed on time, were successfully allowed into the US and caught a shuttle to our hotel on West 57th Street, arriving there around 8.30pm local time. Feeling a tad knackered, we opted for dinner in the hotel restaurant and went to bed.
After a very filling breakfast, Thursday was spent mostly walking in the sunshine... I'd a list of comic and traing33k stores I wanted to visit, so we headed down Broadway, where we picked up combined tickets for bus tours, boat tours and various other touristy type things. Walked through Times Square
and past the Flatiron building
into Manhattan to the Forbidden Planet store, then meandered slowly back uptown via St Mark's Place (comics), 4th Ave (where I bought a cool utilikilt in an awesome goth store), then cut back across to 5th Ave and back up to the hotel where we both crashed out. By the time we woke up, it was too late to bother finding food anywhere... so we just went back to sleep XD
We decided to do one of the boat trips - the Liberty and Ellis Islands one, so caught a sightseeing bus down to Battery Park (via the Empire State Building
and Greenwich Village) and queued for a bit for the airport-style security to get on the boat. The boat took us on a circular trip around Liberty Island
and onto Ellis Island (the former Immigration centre), giving some great views of the Manhattan skyline
on the way. Looking at the long queues to get off both Islands, we think we made the right choice to just stay on the boat XD
Back on dry land, we hopped back onto a sightseeing bus for a few stops, then walked through Chinatown and Little Italy before hitting Greenwich Village and finding a pub on Bleeker Street for a beer or two. Continuing along Bleeker Street, we found an awesome Indian restaurant for dinner, then with dusk descending, decided to visit the Empire State Building and see New York's lights. More airport-style security and moderate queuing to reach the 86th floor obsevation deck where we were treated to spectacular views of the city.
. Waiting for the elevator back down, we saw that for an extra $15 each, we could visit the observation platform on the 102nd floor, so waited for a bit for the ticket seller to return from break... and waited... and waited... before being allowed up to pay on the way back down. So up we went and saw the city from even higher XD Getting into the elevator to back to the 86th floor, the operator told us that the ticket seller had now finished for the day, so we got the extra for free, result!! Browsed the giftshop before heading back to street level and a rainy walk back to the hotel.
Despite slightly sore feet, we did more walking on Saturday, despite the rain. Shel wanted to visit Tiffany & Co on the corner of 5th Ave and 57th St, so we went a looked at all the lovely shinys and bought some ^_^ before re-visiting Macy's, where the flower displays were awesome
Leaving Macy's, we headed just around the corner to Red Caboose Hobbies... quite possibly the most weird and definitely the maddest modeltraing33k shop EVA!! Down in a dingy basement, crammed randomly with stuff on ceiling-high shelves and with the most stereo-typical traing33k store owner and his assistant, plus a big ginger cat. I'm pretty certain the cat was the most sane one in there >.> I did pick up a couple of traing33ky bits, so it was worthwhile! And then a walk back to the hotel, followed by dinner in a cafe just down the road.
Off to the seaside today, with the weather bright (if windy) we took the Subway down to Coney Island and walked along the beach
, after which spent a few hours visiting the New York Aquarium on Coney Island... lots of lovely fishies, big and small, penguins,
seahorses
, walruses
, sharks
, turtles
and a very cute sea-otter
oh... and hoards of families! We then took the Subway back 'home', followed by dinner at the local cafe again.
After a late breakfast, we headed down to Pier 83 for a 2 hour cruise around the lower end of Manhattan as far as the UN, allowing another chance to grab pics of Lady Liberty
and that awesome skyline
. The tour guide was very informative and funny ^_^ Afterwards, we mooched around a few more stores, then headed back. Dinner was a superb Thai meal in a very nice place near the hotel... wish we'd found it sooner!
Our last day in New York was spent in Central Park
, a nice relaxing walk in the relative piece and quiet, enjoying the birds and squirrels. We also did the Central Park Zoo
.
For dinner, we took the Subway downtown and had a wonderful pizza in John's Pizzeria on Bleeker Street, then with the rain getting heavier, Shel hailed a cab back to the hotel where we packed.
After our last breakfast in NYC, we checked out and had a wee stroll down 57th Street to kill a few hours before our shuttle back to JFK and our overnight flight back to Blighty. Jetlag is a real killer though... hopefully I'll be awake enough for work tomorrow >.>
We had an awesome week, would definitely go back again and do all the stuff we didn't have the time to do - MOMA, the Met, etc.