Sam & Georgia's Travels : New York

Ahh New York, New York. Our favourite city in the world.

We arrived in the afternoon and had to catch a bus into the city, our hotel was a small place on the corner between Soho and Chinatown.

It didn’t take us long to ditch our bags at the hotel and jump on the subway to Bryant Park. During the holiday season Bryant Park is turned into Winter Wonderland, with a free ice-skating rink and cool little pop up stores surrounding it, all under an array of Christmas lights.

We took the opportunity to go ice-skating in the park in New York and spent some time fighting our way though crowd to get around the rink. I was pretty disappointed when Sam was better than me, even though it was his first time.

It was spectacular skating around surrounded by the New York skyline, and the State library behind us.

It’s only a short walk from Bryant Park to Times Square so we thought we would have a look around. As always the amount of lights and people was shocking, the whole area has a glow and every store has a neon flashing light.

We spent the next day around the downtown area, after getting bagels for breakfast and walking through Tribeca and the East Village we found ourselves at the 9/11 Memorial Site. The new One World Trade building is now complete and actually being used and the new museum is up and running. Hundreds of people were lining up to get into the museum but we eventually got in and it was well and truly worth the wait. It is absolutely incredible, ramps take you down and the museum has been built below the two memorial pools, in the exact spots of each tower. There are so many incredible things that were recovered from the site and you begin to understand how important that day was, it becomes less of an American event and more of a Worldwide event.

We thought it would be similar to the old smaller museum, so weren’t expecting to spend too much time there, however we ended up spending about two and a half hours and probably didn’t see it all.

It’s amazing to see the progression that the Ground Zero has made, over four trips to New York it has changed from a hole in the ground in 2006, to a small museum and construction site in 2010, the memorial pools and a small museum to what it is now. It’s incredible; 13 years later it is complete.

We walked back to Times Square, before we realisedit was a Saturday night and the amount of people was absolutely ridiculous, we had to push our way through the throngs of people and stop at a number of restaurants before we found a place to eat. The subway home was a great relief for the feet after a huge day of walking and standing.

Sam had me up early the next day, dragging me out of the hotel before 9:30. We walked over to Tribeca again and got a bit to eat at the Chelsea Market, which is a really cool old warehouse filled with small independent shops, all of which were well out of our price range, so we stuck to bagels.

From there we walked along the Highline, the old raised railway line that ran through the city and has now been turned into a public garden. It’s amazing, a gorgeous garden surrounded with views of the East Village and Lower East Side.

It was about time to get off our feet so we decided to hire some bikes and ride around Central Park. Both of us (mainly me) were appalled by our unfitness but we made it through a lap of the entire park, which was a lot bigger than we had expected and remembered.

After braving about three actual New York streets we ditched the bikes and walked along to and down Fifth Avenue. A quick look inside Tiffany’s we were reminded that we had no money to spend and moved away from the shops. We stopped at the Rockefeller Centre, hoping to catch a look at the huge Christmas tree but it was still being decorated.

On our last day in the city we had breakfast at a cool little New York style diner, full of construction workers and four men behind the counter shouted orders at each other. The coffee was awful and Sam got bacon instead of ham and sausage, but it was awesome! Plus it only cost $12 for the both of us!

A quick trip to JFK and we are off to Iceland!