NEW YORK CITY

WHERE: New York City

WHEN: March 2014

HOW LONG FOR: 3 days

New York has been up there on my list of ‘places I need to visit’ for quite some time, and I was lucky enough to tick it off last year. I’m not usually a city person – give me a little town by the seaside over stifling sky scrapers any day of the week! But New York is different… it’s a special kind of pretty. The classic yellow taxi cabs zooming around the city using their horns at any and every opportunity, huge skyscrapers towering over streets filled with New Yorkers busily weaving between meandering tourists, and the bright lights of Broadway illuminating the showbiz vibe of the city. I genuinely wandered around with eyes wide and a half-open mouth in awe of this magnificent metropolis that absolutely lived up to my expectations. Here are some of my favourite must-sees:

1. TIMES SQUARE

Times Square is just SO COOL. I’m not sure there’s much else to say about it… Lots of bright lights, the Good Morning America studio, the Big Red Steps which I immediately recognised from the most recent Spiderman movie.

DSCF4509 — ME BEING EXTREMELY UNCOOL IN ONE OF THE COOLEST PLACES ON THE PLANET ~ I’m not going to make a habit of including pictures of me or my travel buddies on my blog, but I feel like this captures how I felt when I saw Times Square

TIMES SQUARE

2. TOP OF THE ROCK

One of the things I really wanted from my trip to New York City was to get that perfect shot of the Skyline. You can either go up the Rockefeller Center or the Empire State Building, and simply because I wanted the Empire State Building to be the focus of my picture, I ventured to the ‘Top Of the Rock’. The view was incredible- on one side you could see the Empire State Building with the Statue of Liberty in the background, and on the other was the huge Central Park. We spent quite a long time up here, pointing out all the landmarks and taking lots of cool panoramic pictures.

ICE SKATING OUTSIDE THE ROCKEFELLER CENTER

3. CENTRAL PARK

When you wander around Central Park you completely forget you are in one of the busiest cities on the planet. It was MUCH bigger than I ever thought it would be – I didn’t get around all of it. If you want to see all of the park, there are people offering pedicab tours (you get slightly hounded at the entrances about this) or you can rent bikes.

STRAWBERRY FIELDS ~ the beautiful memorial for John Lennon. I was lucky enough to meet Sir Paul McCartney on my flight from the UK to New York, so I had a bit of a Beatles-filled weekend!

4. ELLIS ISLAND & LIBERTY ISLAND

We went on a tour of both Ellis Island and Liberty Island. Wandering around the museum on Ellis Island learning about the 12 million immigrants chasing the American Dream was extremely touching. And then, of course, no trip to New York is complete without a visit to the Statue of Liberty who welcomed all those immigrants to their new lives. I would thoroughly recommend the audio tours on both of these islands.

THE STATUE OF LIBERTY ~ Sorry for the poor quality of my photo here, I went to New York in March and it was absolutely chucking it down with rain.

5. GROUND ZERO

The memorial of 9/11. As soon as I entered, I was hit with a lot of emotions – heartbroken for the innocent people who lost their lives, reflective about how unpredictable life can be, and touched at how so many come here to remember.