New York; Friday, 14 April, 2017

Possibly because it had been such a late arrival I got a good night’s sleep and woke at the relatively sensible time of 7am so I unpacked my luggage had a shower and headed down to reception to get a recommendation for somewhere to get breakfast. They suggested a diner a block away so I headed over there for breakfast.

Having consumed a breakfast that was fast approaching my own body weight – and by some way not the largest thing on the menu – I headed back to the hotel to pick up my camera and bag and then headed out into the city.

First stop was just across from the hotel – the World Trade Centre site. As it was still early there were very few tourists around so I was able to take in the two memorial pools, located on the footprints of the twin towers, in the quiet. After having a look at the memorial I headed over to the new One World Trade Centre, given the same name as the North Tower it’s now the tallest building in the Western hemisphere and the top few floors have been opened up as an observation tower.

As it was early I could walk straight up to the ticket desk, get a ticket, get through security and get into a lift within a couple of minutes which zipped me up to the top of the building. From the viewing gallery on the 100th floor there were spectacular views over Manhattan, Liberty and Ellis islands, Brooklyn and up both the East and Hudson rivers. I spent quite a long time taking in the views before finally heading back down to ground level.

By the time I got back down to ground level the whole area was heaving – with the queue to get tickets now very long and the area around the memorial no longer as quiet as it had been earlier. From the WTC I wandered through the neighbouring streets until I reached Wall Street and had a bit of a wander around the financial district, taking in both the Charging Bull and the Fearless Girl statues before heading through Bowling Green and the Battery Park to the Staten Island Ferry terminal.

At this point I decided to head uptown to the heart of Manhattan so I hopped on the Subway up to Times Square – which turned out to be even busier than the area round the World Trade Centre had been.

As I was wandering around I came across the bus stop for one of the many open-top tour companies offering bus tours of New York – this one had the advantage of having buses on stand, staff available to sell tickets and quite short queues so I paid for my two day ticket and boarded the Downtown tour.

I took in a full circuit of the downtown tour, back to Times Square where I changed onto the uptown tour and did a circuit of that. Back in Times Square I had a bit of a walk around until the time was right to head back to the bus stop, as the sun set, to pick up the night tour.

By the time I’d completed the night tour it was gone 9pm and I realised I was quite hungry. Thankfully the tour stopped just opposite a pizzeria which was serving giant New York pizzas by the slice so I had a couple of slices before catching the subway back to my hotel and bed.