USA Trip Report Part One: New York

I'm sorry, the formatting on this post sucks, but I can't be bothered fixing it.  I'm sure you'll cope.

We were in New York for 4 night/3 days.  We arrived late on the 12th of September, after leaving home early on the 12th of September and travelling for 30 hours.

We stayed at the West Side YMCA.  It was exactly as expected, good size bunk room, decent beds, grubby bathrooms, and brilliant price.  I can cope with grubby bathrooms for that.  Best of all the location was supurb, West 63rd street about 100 metres from Central Park, 3 blocks to Columbus Circle Metro AND Whole Foods supermarket, the best supermarket in the whole wide world.

Next morning we were up bright and early for breakfast in Central Park before meeting our New York Greeter, Chuck.  Chuck took us all around Central Park and was full of information.   This is by a lake, yes I should know which one, um, a big one? 

Bethesda Fountain:

Mia meeting a squirrel (we don't have them here, so they are a curiosity for us)

After we said goodbye to Chuck we went to see Radio City Music Hall where they were holding the MTV music awards so the place was a circus, then up the Top of the Rock.  We chose this rather than the Empire State Building for the better views. It really was most spectacular, but the thing that made me giggle was all the camera flashes over on the ESB, all taking pictures of us taking photos of them. I've never seen more tourists anywhere than I did in New York, the place was crawling with camera laden people.  We stayed up the TOTR from just before dusk until after sunset and were rewarded with a really incredible view, and we were also rewarded with being jammed shoulder to shoulder with more people than should ever be on top of a building. It was 3-4 people thick at the edge!  I think we lucked in because apparantly the day before you couldn't see a thing.
Here you have Central Park from TOTR.

And after dark looking in the other direction to all the camera flashes atop the ESB. 

Then last stop for the night, Times Square.  Most specifically for the Toys R Us store, it's so big it has a Ferris Wheel in it!

Next day we headed out to catch the Staten Island Ferry past Lady Liberty, how many photos do you need to see, she's just the same in all of them, I thought this was much more interesting.  See all those cameras?  There were so many people taking photos of the Statue that I thought the boat was going to tip over, the other side was completely bare.  And the kids, aren't they gorgeous :)

We went to see the Staten Island memorial to the 9/11 victims on the waterfront. I'd like to say this was on purpose, but it was because we wondered what the big white thing was.  Postcards apparantly FYI.  Then back on the ferry and to Ground Zero, which is a big fenced hole in the ground with nothing to see and little more to do.  Richard and Jordan tried to go see Wall Street but the place was cordoned off for miles because President Obama was speaking there.   The buildings in this area were pretty amazing and it was the one time I wished we'd had a travel guide book to tell me about them all.  So we ate lunch at a park, then split up, Jordan and I went to the Tribute World Trade Centre museum (mildly interesting and overpriced to me, more interesting to Jordan as he was only 7 when the towers came down) and Richard and the two shorties went to the American Museum of Natural History where Jordan and I joined them later.  Connor set up this shot

I thought the AMNH was possibly the most boring building I have ever entered.  Now I probably do it a great injustice, it's really very comprehensive and I can see that if we were learning about something specific it would be a wonderful resource. But wandering for hours looking at dead/stuffed/fake animals and skeletons, meh.  The human evolution area was reasonably interesting though, I'll give them that.

That night we took the Metro (got our moneys worth from our 7 day card in just 4 days!!) to Brooklyn to eat pizza at the famous Grimaldis before walking back to Manhatten via the Brooklyn Bridge.  I'm told the pizza is supurb, but as you can see I got a wine and a map, they didn't have so much as a salad for me to eat, however, the family enjoyed it very much and I stuffed my face later on at Whole Foods most satisfyingly.

This photo is before we had pizza.

And these are after:

On our last day we were rather late rising.  We marched through Central Park to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I thought it was wonderful.  Richard says the Louvre was better, I thought the Louvre was dull, but perhaps I was young and stupid then, who knows!  Anyway, I won't show you photos of the stuff that we saw, cool as it was, because you can see it on the interweb thingy in far better quality than I can show you.  But here's the family on the steps.

From there we we went to Grand Central Station and on to Toys R Us in Times Square. It's all about priorities folks, and childrens priorities are toys!

Then we went for a horse and carriage ride through Central Park. Yes it's naff but who cares.
Next day, up bright and early to march through Central Park (sensing a theme here?  what happened to the stroll, that's what I want to know!) to go rowing on the lake,  but the boathouse was closed. So we had a photo

 and then marched (yep, groan, my feet were blister city, thank goodness I'd packed a ton of blister plasters) back again to get the rental car and head on out of town.

That, folks, was New York, and I LOVED it!