Day 2: New York

Yesterday was a very long day so we had an early night. I woke up around 8am this morning, which would be 1pm UK time, feeling a lot more refreshed. Breakfast isn't included at our hotel so our first stop was a nearby McDonalds to get coffee and something to eat, before heading off on our exploration of New York. We had a vague list of places we wanted to see and Tim had made some notes about which ones were nearest to each other, because we'd quickly realised from looking at the map that New York is huge and we might end up walking some pretty long distances if we weren't strategic with our sightseeing.

We started by exploring the streets not far from our hotel.

We realised we were walking past the headquarters of News Corporation, the owner of Fox News.

Sure enough there was a news ticker on the side of the building giving the latest headlines.

Round the corner from there was the Rockefeller Centre, a group of Art Deco buildings constructed in the 1930s.

The main tower is 66 storeys high, which made it the third tallest building it the world when it opened in 1933, although today it's only the 28th tallest in New York City.

At the base of the tower there's a rather odd statue and fountain, plus an ice rink.

Just around the corner from the Rockefeller Centre is St Patrick's Cathedral.

It's really unusual seeing a cathedral sandwiched in by such tall buildings!

We also found another church nearby which to us looked almost Orthodox in design, but googling reveals it is St Bartholomew's Episcopal Church.

After that we had some skyscrapers on our list to track down. I really liked this one, the Helmsley Building, which is relatively small with only 35 storeys, but very pretty.

With 77 stories, the Chrysler building is much bigger!

We took a break from skyscrapers at that point to have a look inside Grand Central Station.

The guidebook had said it was worth seeing inside and it really was, with a very ornate ceiling...

...and huge chandeliers.

Once outside again we walked past the New York Public Library...

...and got our first view of the Empire State Building.

With 102 stories, this one is huge and was the tallest building in the world from 1931 to 1970.

As we continued our walk across Manhattan we passed lots more enormous buildings.

Eventually we got a view of the tallest building of all: One World Trade Center.

At 541m tall, this is not only the tallest building in New York but the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere and the 7th tallest building in the world.

That meant we'd reached the financial district of New York, and sure enough we soon saw a sign for Wall Street.

It was really cool to see the famous stock exchange...

...and we also found the bull statue, which seemed to be one of the most popular tourist attractions in New York judging by the number of people crowding around it!

After what felt like a very long walk (17,000 steps!) we finally reached our ultimate destination, which was the Staten Island Ferry Terminal. The Staten Island Ferry is a free ferry which runs between Manhatten and Staten Island every 30 minutes or so. I don't think there is necessarily much to see on Staten Island, but the ferry is a popular tourist attraction for its amazing views.

And it's particularly popular because it sails right past the Statue of Liberty  

Tim managed to get some good pictures, despite the fact that it was very crowded out on the deck.

The journey to Staten Island takes around 25 minutes. Once you get to the end it's obligatory to get off the ferry - you can't stay on for a round-trip - but it felt like 95% of the people on the boat did the same as us, disembarking and then queuing up to reembark straight away

By the time we were making the return journey it had started to snow slightly and competition to get out on the deck was a little less fierce, so we were able to get some more photos.

I have to admit that the Statue of Liberty looked a bit smaller than I was expecting, but Tim assures me it is huge and we were just a long way away from it!

As the ferry pulled back into Manhattan we had some amazing views of the skyscrapers again.

All in all it was a very exciting journey

That said, we couldn't quite face another 17,000 steps back to our hotel, so we decided to negotiate the New York subway and ended up taking a train back as far as Times Square. Times Square doesn't really seem to be a square - more like a busy traffic junction with a lot of billboards.

It was exciting to see though! It was now about 3pm and starting to snow quite a lot so we decided to have a belated lunch/early dinner. We found a branch of the chain Applebees, which we'd tried and enjoyed in Montana back in 2022, so we decided to give that a go. I had an amazing macaroni cheese (although technically it was made with penne!), topped with chicken in a honey sauce. Meanwhile Tim had an enormous chicken burger.

Both were really nice! By the time we emerged from the restaurant it was snowing quite heavily with very wet snowflakes (more like the snow in England than in Lapland!). We'd got over 20,000 steps by this point and we were feeling pretty tired, so we went back to the hotel to relax and catch up on the blog