I left around midday on Friday and the journey was very uneventful, we hit some traffic on the way into NY and finally arrived at about 6:30pm. The hostel was thankfully easy to find and close to a subway station. We were staying just off Broadway in uptown Manhattan in West End Studios Hostel. The place was nice enough (our room was anyway) but the woman on reception didn't seem to speak much English, initially she put me in the wrong room but finally it was sorted. Another group from the course had travelled down to NY the day before and we were all staying in the same hostel, so after meeting up with them we went out to a club for the night. Entry was free before midnight so it was a cheap but fun night out. On the way back we started to realise that the subway system in NY is actually rubbish, very confusing, badly organised and too infrequent. Having travelled on the London Underground quite a lot in the last year I've been used to walking onto the platform and never usually having to wait more than a minute or two for a train to turn up (obviously there are times when this is not the case but on the whole you don't usually have to wait at all). In NY we generally had to wait 10 minutes or so for a train to even turn up. Very frustrating when you only have a weekend in the city, every minute counts!
On Saturday I decided to buy a 2 day sight-seeing ticket which included open-top bus tours, a ferry to Liberty Island, a ticket to the Empire State Building observation deck and a cruise around the harbour, all for the grand total of $77. There were two companies offering similar itineraries. We chose the blue bus, this turned out to be a mistake, the blue buses only came about once every 10 minutes and tended to be full, whereas the red buses came about once every 2 minutes. So, if you ever go to NY and want an open-top bus tour go with the red company! Anyway, once on the bus the tour guides were very good and we could get on and off where we wanted. I was joined by Ciara, who is on the course here at Cornell and is studying in Dublin. Our first stop was at the Empire State Building, we had to go throus airport-style security checks (as you do for pretty much everything over here) before we could join the queue for the lift. As with a lot of touristy things over here you don't just wait in one long queue, we had to queue to get through security, there was then another queue to buy tickets (which we bypassed as we already had ours), a queue to get the lift to the 80th floor and then another queue to get a second lift to the 86th floor where the observation deck actually is. Then we had to queue twice to get the lifts back down again. Overall the whole thing took us about 2 hours but fortunately it was a beautiful clear day and the views from the top were amazing.
Next we got back on the bus to Chinatown, where we got off for lunch and to take photos of the amusing shop names (such as 'Nice One Bakery Inc.' 'Happy Time Cafe' and 'New Big Wang Restaurant'). We then wondered down to 'Ground zero' although it is now looks more like a building site than a disaster area, there is really nothing apart from the big empty space and a few nearby buildings still surrounded by scaffolding to suggest that anything major happened there. I think my only disappointment after visiting NY was that I didn't get to see it when the twin towers were still standing, the skyline must have been spectacular.
We then planned to get on the ferry to Liberty Island but the queue was very very long (so long that we didn't even bother finding the end of it before we decided not to bother), so instead we spent a couple more hours on the bus tours and then walked back to the hostel through Central Park, which is massive and a very pleasant place to find in the middle of the city. That night we went to a Japanese restaurant for dinner. We had to take our shoes off before we went in and the tables were sunk into the floor so that you actually sat down on the floor to eat rather than on chairs. We ordered plates of raw meats and cooked everything on a little barbecue in the centre of the table, it was all very exciting and the food was very good. After that a group of us went into Times Square (absolutely breathtaking at night, like Picadilly Circus but 100 times bigger and brighter) and ended up at 'Ripley's Believe it or Not', which is basically a museum of weird things (man with no legs, two headed cow etc.)
On Sunday we left the hostel early to get our ferry to Liberty Island before the queues got too long. We only had to wait about half an hour. We didn't actually get off the ferry onto the island but had brilliant views of the statue and also of Ellis Island nearby, where the immigrants used to arrive in NY. Once we were back on land we wandered up to Wall Street, and while Ciara and Emily took the bus tour around Brooklyn I managed to get a ring at Trinity Church on Wall Street and then had a stroll out onto the Brooklyn Bridge. Not only is the bridge amazing, but you also get really good views back onto the Manhattan skyline, so the walk is well worth it if you are ever there!
Unfortunately it was then time to head back to the coach station and then back to Ithaca. As you can tell by the length of this post I had a really busy weekend but I feel like there is so much that I didn't get to do, of all the cities I have visited so far I thought that NY was the most vibrant and exciting, I really would encourage everyone to visit at some point if you haven't already! We were also really lucky that the weather was so amazing, it was sunny with clear blue skies all weekend, which made it all the more enjoyable.
Hope everyone is fine and dandy. The next few weekends I'll be hanging around Ithaca so may not have too much to report but after the program finishes in 2 weeks time, Fiona and I (plus another girl from the course) have planned a mini-holiday to Philadelphia and Chicago followed by a short road trip up to the Great Lakes. Then after that I'll be heading down to Georgia for a week and a half to see my friend Miriam. So, plenty of excitement on the horizon! I'll finish off with a few photos as usual.
Stephen xx
The Empire State Building, currently the tallest building in NY 
Central Park, right in the middle of the city
Two headed cow at Ripley's Believe it or Not
The Statue of Liberty
The downtown Manhattan skyline, the WTC towers would have been pretty much in the centre of the photo, just to the left of the black skyscraper and would have been soooo much taller than all those other buildings.
1 comment:
I think you should write a travel guidebook; somewhat reminiscent of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, only about America.
Post a Comment