This March a group of us traveled out to the ‘Big Apple’ for a birthday celebration, and although I had my reservations about going for a full week, there was plenty to keep us busy and we even managed to squeeze a visit to Philly in too!

Flying with Delta

We traveled to JFK Airport from Heathrow with Delta airlines. This was a pretty pleasant journey with a lot of choice in entertainment with the in seat screens, you have a choice of recent movie releases, television shows, and games. There was also plenty of food & drink included in our flight, I enjoyed a full lunch, full hot dinner, movie snacks, and ice cream.

Staying in Brooklyn

We decided to rent an apartment in Brooklyn for our week in NYC as there was seven of us and to stay in a hotel in Manhattan would have been too expensive for us. It was nice to see Brooklyn and you could definitely feel the difference between this community suburb and the metropolitan atmosphere of Manhattan. We were lucky enough to find an apartment with enough rooms for us all and brilliant facilities, which also happened to be close to the subway station which was great!

We were in the area of Bushwick which had quite a few shops for us to get supplies such as much needed midnight nachos! We also made a visit to Williamsburg which is a trendy part of Brooklyn with many bars and restaurants, where we had the enjoyment of trying out a ‘Meatball Shop‘ a great restaurant offering various meatball & spaghetti recipes. Opposite this, was an amazing bakery which offered the most freshly baked cakes I have ever seen in one place! Definitely worth a stop!

As well as making use of a weekly subway ticket which is a bargain at $30, I would also recommend taking a walk from Brooklyn into Manhattan if you have a chance. This well known bridge has some great views of the New York skyline and various stalls and artists sitting a long it.

Views of New York; Statue of Liberty, Top of the Rock, & Empire State building

I visited many of the main view points in New York City both during the day and night and I would have to say that whilst the Empire State building was a great view point within Manhattan, the queuing process for this is very long for a reasonably short experience, so I would recommend getting there early and having your tickets already.

My favourite view overall was the view from the ferry to the Statue of Liberty which showed the true skyline of lower Manhattan surrounded in water. The boat is great too as you are able to go outside or inside on three different levels to get the best snap. We also went up the crown of the Statue of Liberty, which had to be pre-booked, and whilst this was a unique experience, it is a very cramped room to stand in and can be quite claustrophobic to climb the many winding steps to the top. I would say that being mid way up the statue can be just as good for a nice shot of Manhattan with a bit less squeezing in small places.

Museums & Central Park

One of the things I didn’t realise before visiting New York was the pure amount of museums and galleries that were available to visit. We tried to pack in quite a few of the main museums, but if I was to revisit I would definitely carry on checking out the museums I missed.

Many of the museums we saw surrounded Central Park which meant we could take a stroll through the park between museum visits. Seeing Central Park in the winter was quite disappointing as it wasn’t the great green space we had hoped to see but the views around the reservoir were lovely and there were plenty of structures to look around at in the park.

The museums surrounding the park included; American Museum of Natural History, Museum of the City of New York and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. These were all fab, the Museum of the City of New York was more based on photographs and imagery and included an interesting film showing the full history of New York. The American Museum of Natural History was full of interesting artifacts from around the world and a brilliant collection of mammals, fish and of course dinosaurs that really wowed us! It was also fun to see familiar scenes in the museum that I’d seen in films like ‘Night at the Museum’. The Metropolitan Museum of Art was also rich in historical objects as well as beautiful sculptures and art, with each room designed differently to suit the period of time or style it represented.

Other museums that were interesting included; the Statue of Liberty museum which explained the history and meaning of this massive American symbol; Ellis Island which holds a huge museum dedicated to the millions of immigrants that came over to New York during the 19th century; and the 9/11 museum which is extremely moving and informative, and which I would recommend everyone should visit.

Times Square

As expected, Times Square is a very busy area, full of tourists and souvenir shops, but also great for restaurants and bars. We went into Times Square a few times for some delicious American food and shopping, a great place to chill out after a day of sightseeing.

Broadway & Sports

If seeing Times Square lit up at night isn’t enough, you can also fill up your evenings with entertainment. We split up our group and saw Chicago in Theatre whilst the boys headed to a Basketball game; Brooklyn Mets Vs Philadelphia 76ers. The game was a bargain and the boys were able to buy there $13 tickets online on the day, whilst the Chicago tickets although more expensive at $75 each were still half price due to being bought on the day from a local TKTs booth. There are several of these booths offering discounted theatre tickets around the city but we decided to use the Lincoln Centre booth as it was less busy and also is the only stand which is housed indoors. The show was great fun and of brilliant quality including song, dance and comedy.

Chinatown & Little Italy

For some great shopping bargains and interesting cuisine it is worth spending an afternoon in Chinatown and the adjacent Little Italy. There is a Chinese market full of peculiar ingredients available to purchase, various shops selling souvenirs and other bottom dollar items, as well as a number of shrines.

I made a visit to the Eastern States Buddhist Temple on Mott St, which was a small tucked away building which you would miss if you did not know where to look. As well as having a Buddhist shrine with a few people worshiping, the building also sold souvenirs and had a bowl of fortunes which you could pay a dollar to take one. My partner and I did this and had very opposite results. This was a great fun and really interesting to see when you wonder down the streets of Chinatown that there are so many of these small temples tucked away. There was also many locals stopping in the street to bow their heads into the doorways, making you want to peer in and take a look.

Little Italy is much smaller, only going over a few streets, but it has many restaurants selling traditional Italian food and you can get a great vibe for the heritage with the colours of the Italian flag painted all around.

A quick trip to Philly…

As we had a week staying in the US we decided to take advantage of our location and book a bus to Philadelphia, which is only 1.5/2 hours from NYC. We traveled with Greyhound for $20 which we booked online a few days before. Ticket collection at Penn Station in Manhattan was simple and the bus journey was fairly pleasant. We managed to arrive early enough to head down to the Independence Visitor Centre and pre-book the last tour of the day for Independence Hall, which can only be viewed through a free booked tour.

After this rush to the Centre we circled back a little bit and I visited the Reading Terminal Market… This market place had such an amazing variety of food from all over the world, and everything looked delicious… I have not stopped thinking about some of the goodies I saw in this place! Of course we had to try a Philly Cheesesteak which Philadelphia has made famous worldwide, and I can see why!

The Cheesesteak from ‘by George’ in the Reading Terminal Market was absolutely mouthwatering! A great mix of steak, onions and melted american cheese was simple but excellent. The stand also sold other amazing looking treats such as pastas, stromboli (rolled up pizza!) and they even made the salad look great! My cheesesteak was a footlong though so I was unable to fit anymore in, how I wish I could go back again though..

After our tasty lunch we headed out towards the Philadelphia Museum of Art where the famous scene from Rocky was filmed of the boxer running up the steps leading to the museum. Many of the people in my group were fans of the film so we decided to take a look and they a long with many others changed into a set of grey trackies and climbed the steps just like Rocky. I had never quite seen anything like this before but I can’t say I wouldn’t do something similar if it was the set from my favourite film! There is now also a statue of Rocky in place which I decided I may as well have a photo shot with as I was there.

To finish off the day we made our way back to the historic district and went towards our tour of Independence Hall. We rushed through security and took some photos of the famous Liberty Bell which I was surprised to have to queue for as I had thought it would be easily accessible outside, but in actual reality it was inside a small museum.

From there we went on to go through further security and on to our tour of Independence Hall which lasted around 40 minutes and included a look at the Assembly room where the Declaration of Independence was signed.

The tour was of course very patriotic and took us through some of the basics of the US history including the revolution. This was very interesting as I had no idea beforehand how long it took the US to become established with laws and elected figures and this is of course is where many of the American people’s ideals today come from and of course the still celebrated ‘Independence Day’.

So that pretty much wraps up my visit to NYC & Philly, if I had made this a longer tour I probably would have made a visit to Washington, Boston or Niagara Falls and Toronto, but I am quite happy with all we squeezed in. This was a very tiring week with us totalling up around 10 miles of walking per day but well worth seeing some of America’s key symbols and historic locations, as well as experiencing New York life a little and meeting many friendly New Yorkers.

Quick tips:

Some other great places worth visiting and tips to remember whilst staying in New York…

• Take a quick look in St Paul’s Chapel. This chapel was built in 1766 and is one of the earliest churches in American history, it is famous for being a place of worship for President George Washington, even immediately following his inauguration. There is also a lot of interesting information inside for visitors.
• Be aware that what might not look far on the map, may actually be a hell of a long way! We were caught out a few times by thinking something at the end of the street wasn’t far, but many of the roads in New York are huge, so it is likely you will walk a long way. Save your feet and take the subway!
• If you are going to a major attraction get there early! We went in March and the crowds were still huge in places like Statue of Liberty and the Empire State building. If you can, get there when it opens!
• Purchase a New York CityPass! This was really handy as it meant our tickets were already sorted for the major attractions we wanted to go to and so in many places we did not have to join the longer ticket line.