New York Adventure – Day 5 Conquering The Fear

I recently embarked on my first trip to New York, with my best friend D. We’d wanted to go since we were 13.

Day 1 to 4 have all been blogged (check them out in the Holidays Category if you missed those) so I’m swiftly moving on to the penultimate day which was amazing, beautiful, terrifying, heartbreaking and visually the most stunning city that your eyes could possibly take in, all in one day! Ladies and gentlemen I give you Day 5.

First plan of action on Day 5 was to go to The Top Of The Rock, or more specifically, the observation deck at the top of the Rockefeller Centre.

Whilst the view from the top of the rock was stunning, it was also terrifying for D and I as D suffers from Vertigo and I have a huge fear of heights. More than anything I was proud that we were able to go up the Rockefeller Centre at all and that we managed to stay up there and take some truly amazing photos that will help us remember this day always.

The one thing I wanted to get a clear photo of was my favourite building – The Chrysler Building. Unfortunately, from the top of the rock, the view of the Chrysler Building is somewhat marred by the Metlife Building standing in the way of getting a clear view. Below, regrettably, was the best I could do.

The Top Of The Rock fully explored – yes folks I went all the way up to the very top, all 70 floors of it – we headed to the Flatiron Building, my second favourite building in New York. Gorgeous architecture and I finally got daytime shots of it in all it’s glory.

I played around with the colour on that one but here’s one from the other side in all it’s natural glory.

Just a beautiful building. It might interest film buff’s to know that the Flatiron Building was used as the Daily Bugle Building in Spider-Man.

Continuing the movie theme we headed to the last stop on Lady K’s Movie Tour which we hadn’t had time to get to on Day 4. The Ghostbusters Fire House.

Anyone would think, looking at the stops on my movie tour, that I was the biggest Ghostbusters fan in the world. I do love it and I think it’s one of the best 80s films ever made, but I’m not the biggest Ghostbusters fan in the world. It’s just a very easy film to find the locations of as it’s set solely in New York and has some of the most famous NY iconography of probably any other film set there.

A lot of my friends had been to 8 Hook And Ladder before but not many had seen it when the main door was open. We were lucky enough to see not only the Ghostbusters 2 logo inside but also a series of melted telephones that had been rescued over the years.

After seeing the Fire House there was only one place on our minds. The newly built (although still in progress when we were there) Freedom Tower loomed in the distance showing us the way to Ground Zero.

We stopped at Starbucks to quench our thirst along the way but remained fairly sombre on our walk towards the spot where the twin towers once stood. We had wanted to go into the memorial and pay our respects but you can only get tickets online, and when we’d tried, it crashed our computers. Not wanting to push our luck for something that clearly wasn’t meant to be we simply went to see the new tower and the church that so many people had told us to visit.

One world trade centre, otherwise known as Freedom Tower, stands impressively in the vast open space left by the fallen twins. It really is a symbol of showing the world the finger and saying that America can go bigger and stronger when you knock them down. But it is still only a building. Not as beautiful or picturesque as some others New York has to offer. It’s merely what it stands for that makes you want to see it. The moment that it really hit home for D and I was when we visited the nearby church of St Paul’s Chapel.

This was the base for the firefighters during the rescue efforts. A display outside the church shows a time line from the moment the first tower was hit on 11th September 2001 to the present day. D and I held it together at the start but by the time we got to the part about the firemen leaving their boots on the church railings, and the ones unclaimed at the end of the day belonging to their fallen comrades, we were so moved that we both burst into tears.

The displays inside the church were equally moving and made the events of 10 years ago all the more real to someone who, thankfully, only experienced it via a series of images on TV and in newspapers. For anyone thinking of going to New York I would highly recommend going to see St Paul’s Chapel. It won’t be a fun part of your trip but it will be something you will never forget. Just like the events of that fateful day.

Outside the church you can see the church spire. Despite being so close to the towers, the church was relatively unscathed by the falling buildings around it and the spire was one of the first things the rescue workers saw when the dust started to settle. Inspiring, no matter what your faith.

Feeling very upset and in need of something sweet to cheer our spirits we decided to pay our only visit to Brooklyn and go to the Ice Cream Factory which sits just under Brooklyn Bridge.

We hailed several cabs, none of which would take us over the bridge (you have to ask them rather than just getting in the cab as many drivers won’t go). Eventually we hailed the nicest cab driver we’d had all trip, and he was from Egypt, not even a New Yorker!

He gave us lots of handy tips for our walk back over the bridge and was by far the friendliest cabbie we met. Worth the tip and then some! He took us straight to the factory where I ordered a chocolate and coffee cone. Bigger than my head and so delicious! Yum!

We lounged in the sun for a little while and then prepared ourselves to walk the Brooklyn Bridge back to Manhattan.

Ah, it looks like I’m caught in Spider-Man’s web but it’s just the view of Brooklyn Bridge from on the bridge!

After our very long walk across the bridge we headed back to the Pod to freshen up and get changed before going for our last supper at Thai 51, a lovely little Thai restaurant just down from our hotel. Delicious food, friendly and quick service and a cute little Thai Bar, perfect! One of the nicest places we ate in New York.

Full to bursting we hopped in a cab and made our way to The Empire State Building which was lit up in Hulk colours just for me!

We were determined our last night was going to be the finale to remember and so decided to end it by going up one of the most iconic buildings in New York. Forget King Kong, this was Lady K and D conquering our fear once and for all. “Would you like to purchase additional tickets for the 102nd floor?” “Err, no, the 86th will do just fine!”

I got a shot of the Flatiron at night

And finally got that longed for, uninterrupted view of the beauty that is the Chrysler Building

My recommendation for the Empire is to take a book or something to keep you occupied as the queues are long and no-where near as well managed as those in the Rockefeller (which didn’t feel like queues at all – more like being moved from place to place at a pace until you reached your destination – the Empire is the total opposite to this with queues that you’re in for over an hour). And make sure you’ve got the settings on your camera at their optimum for taking night shots. My camera could have taken much better pictures than these but was new and I hadn’t taken the time to study the manual (I should have done that in the queue). But overall I’m still pleased with the memories captured and the fear conquered.

See you all next time for the final day in the city that never sleeps. Lady K x

New York Adventure – Day 2

Anyone who read my previous New York post will know that I recently embarked on my first trip outside Europe, to New York, with my best friend D.

As Day 1 has been charted I thought I’d move swiftly on to Day 2 of our adventure which includes some very exciting things indeed!

We’d already planned our days out quite meticulously but the plans were open to change if something unexpected cropped up. Day 1 went pretty much to the letter. Day 2 however strayed off the path a little bit…

Having woken up relatively early we headed out to get Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Now anyone who knows New York or has seen Breakfast at Tiffany’s will know that Audrey Hepburn doesn’t go into Tiffany’s and sit down to eat breakfast. Tiffany’s is not one of New York’s finest eateries but a jewelers. She eats a pastry and drinks coffee while standing outside the shop window. And anyone who knows this goes to Tiffany’s, pastry and coffee in hand, and poses outside the shop for photographs to capture their Audrey moment.

Here’s mine:

Sadly it did rain throughout our Audrey moment but it was still lovely to be there and do what she did. We had a little time to kill and looked for shelter prior to meeting the bus for the Sex and the City Tour we were booked on. We found a little cinema called the Paris Theatre which funnily enough featured in an episode of Sex and the City! Carrie goes to see a movie on her own on “date night” at this glamorous, old-school, single-screen theater, asking for “Joy For Two – for one”. She muses, “the most amazing thing about living in a city like New York is that any night of the week you can go to Paris.”

We caught the tour bus shortly after our trip to Paris and went on a journey all over the city. From the pick up point at the Fountain outside the Plaza hotel we passed the Flatiron Building, visited Buddakan, one of the locations for the first Sex and the City film (where Carrie and Big have their rehearsal dinner);

We then stopped at the Magnolia Bakery (again) and O’Neill’s Bar which is used as the location for the ‘Scout’ bar owned by Aiden and Steve in the show. We stopped there for a cheeky, early-afternoon Cosmopolitan:

The tour bus dropped us off outside the HBO shop which is round the corner from three other Sex and the City locations, Bryant Park where Samantha had red paint thrown over her during New York Fashion Week, the Bryant Park Hotel used in the first SATC movie - the scene when Carrie hits Big with her bouquet and Charlotte shouts ‘NO!’ at Big after he’s pulled the plug on the wedding – and of course, the New York Public Library where the non-wedding was held. Being so close to the NY Public Library, where Ghostbusters and The Day After Tomorrow were filmed, we had to go in. This is where we deviated from ‘the plan’ as we didn’t know this is where the tour would drop us off so we’d planned to do the NY Public Library and surrounding area on another day. It just meant we had to do a little bit of swapping and being adaptable with our other days.

Here’s a nice pic of the street from The Day After Tomorrow that the wall of water came down:

And a nice pic of the Library from across the street:

From the NY Public Library we crossed the street to grab our first NY Hot Dog. D tried the Chilli Dog but I wasn’t brave enough and opted for a standard dog with ketchup. It was really good though. :0P

We turned a corner and without even realising where we were, we’d ended up face to face with Grand Central Station! And more importantly film fans, with the bridge that the main fight scene is on at the end of Avengers Assemble (or Marvel’s The Avengers as it’s known in the rest of the world)!!! As you can imagine, to someone like me who is something of a film fan (I’ve seen Avengers 6 times), this was a momentous occasion indeed!

From here we also had a clear view of the Chrysler Building. The best view we had of it really. If I’d known that I’d have taken more pictures of it but as it was I only took two. This was the best one of the gorgeous building:

I marvelled (pun intended) at the Bridge and the Chrysler for as long as I could convince D to stay there but eventually she wanted to go and have a mooch around Grand Central. So off we went for a quick look around the famous train station.

Unfortunately as it was so overcast that day, we didn’t get any shots of the light coming in the windows as it does in the famous pictures of Grand Central Station. We also didn’t go down to any of the platforms so I can’t show you any photos of that. But what we did see in the main terminal was a truly gorgeous building, which explains why it’s ”the world’s number six most visited tourist attraction”, bringing in approximately 21,600,000 visitors annually, according to the travel magazine Travel + Leisure in its October 2011 survey.

From Grand Central we made our way back to our hotel to freshen up for the evening and then headed to Chinatown for our evening meal.

For anyone who is planning a trip to New York I would not recommend a trip to Chinatown. New York has a certain smell about it. I’m not sure if it’s the subway, the river, the sewer, the fact that there are SO MANY people, traffic or what? But it has a smell. Not pleasant but also not exactly unpleasant. It’s not always noticeable but it’s just how New York smells. If you’ve been there you’ll know what I mean. Chinatown has a whole other smell. And this one really ain’t nice! It’s a dirty place. Much dirtier than the rest of New York, and just has a completely different feel. When you walk around Chinatown you feel like you’re not in New York anymore. And that’s not a good or comfortable feeling.

We did find a nice place to eat there, very reasonably priced and with nice, friendly waiters. But the food was a bit strange. Dishes you’d order here did not come prepared in the same way. The food was nice, just a little odd.

After our meal we got out of Chinatown pronto and walked back to our hotel via a few shops. It was the first real chance we’d had to shop and so we made the most of it. On the way we passed a nice gothic looking church;

and the Flatiron Building again, so I had the opportunity to take some pictures of it:

Regrettably my camera is not so good at taking pictures at night, as I discovered on this trip, so this was the best night time shot of the beautiful Flatiron Building but thankfully I was able to re-visit it during the day and got some cracking photos of it then.

Until next time NY fans...

Lady K