New York, New York

"Twinkly lights of lower Manhattan and the FinancialDistrict from a cold and windy Brooklyn Bridge Park."
Thanks to Raymond Caruthers - Flickr

"Awesome!” In a word, that is how I would describe my trip to New York. From start to finish I was amazed by the sights, the food and the overall vibe the city had to offer.

I visited New York for 6 days in May 2015 with one of my close friends. This was an ideal time to visit as the weather was reasonably good and there was not a great amount of tourists, meaning the queues for attractions were a lot less than expected.

Madison Square Garden - Lady Gaga Concert

We had tried to cram in as much as possible during our time there but our scheduling wasn’t at its finest when booking our first event. We had planned to go to the Lady Gaga concert on the night we arrived not realising just how jet lagged we might be. After nearly falling asleep during the support act, we were able to enjoy and be a part of the best concerts I have seen. The experience of attending Madison Square Garden to see such an outstanding artist perform in her hometown was fantastic! From the passion of her fans, the amazing venue and superb performance this is one concert that will extremely difficult to top.

New York Sights

To allow us a chance to explore more of the city we bought a 3-day pass for the hop-on-hop-off-bus tour, thinking we’d get where we wanted to go and be able to take in some of the sights. We always started our tour at Time Squares but had various stops at Macys (shopping is a must there), a trip up the Empire State Building – which has the most incredible view and had next to no queue to get to the top due to time of year – a stop at the 9/11 memorials, a drive down wall street to see the charging bull and a jaunt on the ferry to see the Statue of Liberty. Our choice of day to visit the island was probably the worst as due to the torrential rain the crossing was pretty rocky seeing many of us getting blown about on the outside deck whilst trying to get a good view and pictures. The rain didn’t stop for the rest of the day resulting in us sitting on the open top deck of an overcrowded tour bus, soaked to the skin and wearing an inadequate poncho watching as our fellow tourists slipped and slid trying to maneuver on and off the bus. All I can say is… it was definitely memorable. On a positive note, as we stepped off the tour bus to make our way back to the hotel we discovered for the first time, “Five Guys!”

Five Guys food was so tasty and we definitely felt it was good value for money! To be honest all the food we had was delicious (apart from Pretzels – none of us were a fan of pretzels). We had a fantastic diner just two blocks away from our hotel called the ‘Ritz Diner’. This was a regular stop for us either to or from the hotel. They do thee best jumbo cheese ravioli and cakes! But the best ice cream has got to be the whippy from Mets baseball game. 

Night at Baseball - Citifield

We figured while we were there we should see what sports were on and go to at least one game. We opted for a baseball game at Citifield in Queens to watch the NY Mets vs NY Yankees but this was certainly the wrong choice for us. Expecting a high tempo sport we soon learnt baseball is a much slower, strategically played sport.

Chicago Theatre; Thanks to paulmcdee – Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Bullets Over Broadway; Thanks to Davis Staedtler – Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

We couldn’t have visited New York without visiting Broadway . We were lucky enough to sit front row at Chicago and also seen Bullets – both fantastic shows.

Would I go back?

Absolutely! Even though I would recommend going around May time my dream would be to go back around December to see the Christmas tree referred to in one of my favourite movies; Home Alone 2: Lost In New York.

#Baseball #Citifield #RitzDiner #FiveGuys #Broadway #Chicago #BulletsOverBroadway #EmpireStateBuilding #StatueOflLiberty #HopOnHopOffBus #MadisonSquareGardens #Macys #TimeSquares #CentralPark #HomeAlone2

The Stats

Hotel; The Bentley Hotel(Package through Thomas Cook)

Travel; Aeroplane - Thomas Cook (Package through Thomas Cook)

Length of trip; 6 days

Month of travel; May 2014

Est. Cost; £2000

Who did I travel with: My best friend

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