New York needs no introduction. “There’s nothing you can’t do”, as Alicia Keys sings in “Empire State of Mind” – and that’s true, as far as I can tell.
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Destination | New York City, USA |
How and when I got there | Lufthansa, Duesseldorf to Newark Airport; July 2012 |
Where I stayed | Apartment via AirB&B, 58 West, 36th street (after a really nice one in Greenwich Village had been cancelled a few weeks before…) |
Restaurants | Keens Steakhouse, 36th street large variety of restaurants in Chinatown breakfast: Pret a Manger on 36th Street |
Things to do | Museums: Metropolitan Museum of Art (https://www.metmuseum.org/); MoMA – Museum of Modern Art (https://www.moma.org/); Guggenheim Museum (https://www.guggenheim.org/)…and many more! Greenwich Village, Chinatown, Brooklyn High Line: previous rail line, transformed into a public park high above the streets on Manhattan’s West Side (https://www.thehighline.org/) and of course hundreds of other things!! |
Recommendations in a nutshell | there’s reason why the New Yoes leave the City in July…better go before or after the hottest weeks of summer Museums on a nice day – shorter Queue any highrise rooftop during the night Ferry to Staten Island |
Recipe | Sloppy Joes (see recipe at the bottom of the post) |
New York – start of a 5 week USA roundtrip. At the beginning of the nineties I had lived in Los Angeles for a year, and loved it. Still, so far I hadn’t managed to come back. For many years, we had talked about taking the kids to the States, and now it was to became reality. Despite the costs…
This is the first part of our US round trip: the second part about some of the famous National Parks in the West, from Grand Canyon to Las Vegas and from Las Vegas to San Francisco, the fourth part about the West Coast from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and the fifth part about Oahu, Hawaii.
First stop: New York, 5 days. I had booked a really nice 2 bedroom in Greenwich Village, via AirB&B. They were pretty new at that time, and for me it was my first AirB&B experience – unfortunately not the best.
A few weeks ahead of the trip the booking was cancelled, and the only help I got from AirB&B was a message offering the NYC apartments still available, or the money back (of course, not the “handling fee”). Turned out, that nothing comparable was available – we finally booked an Apartment in midtown, a bit run-down and almost twice as expensive as the one before, in 36th street:
At least the Location was very good: Metro Station, lots of restaurants and breakfast places just around the corner, and everything between the Empire State Building and Central Park in walking distance.
Midtown & Financial District
New York offers so many different things to do – it’s impossible to name them all. During our first three days we had an impeccably blue sky and temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius. This reduced the comfortable sightseeing times to the early morning and late afternoon hours. We still tried to cross the Brooklyn Bridge at noon, but gave up pretty fast. Instead, we visited the Battery Park and took the Staten Island Ferry for Sightseeing (see below).
Greenwich Village and more…
The next morning we opted for a walking tour across Greenwich village, little Italy and Chinatown, finishing with a gorgeous lunch in a tiny Chinese restaurant – unfortunately I can’t remember the name, but it was somewhere in the middle of Chinatown.
The MoMa (Museum of Modern Art) was scheduled for a friday night – the admission is free for all visitors every friday evening after 4:00 p.m. until closure at 8:00 p.m. It is pretty crowded on the free friday nights, but it saves you 100 $ when going with 4 persons. We spent these 100 $ on a nice dinner afterwards, sitting outside the…
Rockefeller Center.
The decoration there is a bit…questionable. But the food was very good.
On our last day the temperatures dropped considerably, accompanied by drizzling rain. Great, we always wanted to see the famous museum of natural history. But the Queue streched over more than two blocks, even with a certain movement in the crowds a waiting time of several hours could be expected. Sadly we said good-bye to the museum and headed into the Central Park instead. That was nice and empty, due to the rain.
Central Park, Park and Fifth Ave
After leaving the Park via the eastern gates, we tried the Guggenheim Museum. The queue was a bit shorter here, but still quite long. So, better schedule the museums on a fine day.
From the Guggenheim it’s just a short walk to Park Avenue, including a lot of intersting cars, and the shop windows on 5th Avenue, where we found a quite realistic appearance of the famous Artist Yayoi Kusama:
And New York by Night
One of the absolute highlights for me is going up the Empire State Building (or any other high rise building) at night. The endless carpet of lights is just incredible.
Last but not least, New York offers a lot of different viewpoints and sights.
More famous sights:
Of course, there’s the High Line, a previous train track, converted to a very nice walk. Really nice is the Skyline view from the ferries – the Staten Island providing a an excellent low-cost view:
Another spot that requires a visit: the former World Trade Center, now a Memorial. During our visit, the new buildings were under construction, but not finished:
Overall, 5 days give a good flavor of New York, but are definitely not enough – we will come back another time.
Greetings from New York
Black-and-White Pictures: Courtesy of Julian Bott!
NYC – Sloppy JoesThis is a recipe that I had never heard of before “How I met your Mother” – then my kids came up and absolutely wanted a try. And we liked it: easy to prepare and scalable from 2 up to 10 kids or more. Great recipe for stressed mothers! So, here’s the variant just for 2 hungry persons: Ingredients
Heat the oil in a coated pan (high heat) and fry the ground beef until slightly roasted. Add all the other ingredients, cook for about 10 minutes while stirring. Serve on “perfect burger buns” (see the “USA – wild, wild West” post), together with the “usual burger toppings like shredded iceberg salad, cheese, tomatoes…Alternatively, Sloppy Joes goes well with any pasta or Rice. |
Related Posts:
USA, Western National Parks, Part 1 | USA, Western National Parks, Part 2 | USA West Coast | Oahu, Hawaii |
*According to a German Court decision, all texts containing links to commercial pages (e.g. links to Tripadvisor, Airline, hotel or restaurant websites) have to be identified as “commercial” (in German “Anzeige”). As my texts do contain links like that, I therefore identify each post and page containing a link as “Anzeige”. However (and referring to the “About Me” page) I would like to point out that I do NOT post any sponsored content in my texts; I pay for all my trips myself.