New York City

Somewhere I HAD to visit on my trip, and my friend who came with me to Boston, actually lives in the State of New York, about 3 hours north of the city, but his parents were kind enough to put us up for a couple of nights, making it an hour-and-a-half train ride into the city itself, which is noticeably easier than attempting to drive around in the city!

We pulled into Grand Central Station, and from there we walked down to see the UN building, since it was so close. From there we walked to the Empire State Building, which is quite tall (1,250 feet), we then queued for the best part of 2 hours to get to the top, a sight worth waiting for!



After the Empire State Building we grabbed some lunch - a real NYC "Brooklyn style" Pizza - something that had to be done! Tasted like any other pizza but still worth the experience. We then headed up towards Central Park, a sanctuary in the centre of New York, it is amazing how quickly you lose the hustle and bustle and constant noise of the city and you are in a park environment with people enjoying many recreational activities from frisbee to beach volleyball on a specially built sand pit!

The plan was to head north to the Natural History Museum, but when we looked at the map it was stil la long way to go and we had done quite a lot of walking by this time, so we headed to the west side of the city to USS Intrepid, an aircraft carrier now stationed at the harbour there. Sadly we arrived 12 minutes too late to be allowed in to the museum ship, so I took a couple of photo's from the outside, including another SR-71 Blackbird plane and Concorde which I could see from a distance.

We then headed back towards Grand Central via Time Square, which was great to see! Like a huge Piccadilly Circus back in London!

All this seems rather like a short day, but it took us all day and although we did not make it to the Statue of Liberty, the city really does require 2 or 3 days to get a good look around, but I am happy with my 1 day in the city itself for now, we walked for many hours and several hours, both our legs feeling it by the end of the day, including most of the return train ride - but this is all part of the experience and it was all good fun!

More pictures from New York City here.

I end this post with a picture of Sean and then myself, taken from the top of the Empire State Building.