I think you could spend a month in New York and not see all the great attractions in this vast city but we only had a week and wanted to pack in as much as we could. Up to this point we had spent most of our time in the midtown area around Times Square but we were now ready to branch out.  New York is just about as big as it gets and if you’re going to explore areas further afield you need to conquer the ferry, subway and bus systems.  And we were fast becoming experts.

To wit, the next day we caught the ferry across the Hudson River to Manhattan and the M11 bus up 10^th Avenue from 40^th Street to 110th Street.  Along the way we soaked in as much as we could of this west side area, just loving the vibrancy, variety, colour and movement of the Big Apple.

Our plan was to start from the northern edge of Central Park and walk southward, exploring different aspects of this green wonderland surrounded by the cement jungle.  And there’s plenty to explore.  Central Park was built in the 1850’s and today is an enormous 853 acres (350 hectares) with 60 miles (100 kilometres) of trails crisscrossing all over the park, multiple lakes, streams, a substantial zoo, a monster tennis complex with dozens of courts, numerous large playgrounds for kids, 32 arched bridges, fountains, statues, cricket grounds, hills, wooded areas, a faux castle and much more. 

Central Park is also visited by over 40 million people a year, most of them locals who retreat to it’s quiet green corners as an escape from the skyscrapers and chaos of the city.  For Julie and I the park was bigger with more features, more to see and more to enjoy than we ever expected.  This huge city is very lucky to have such a gem and we relished our time wandering it’s paved paths and taking in the scenes.

Based on a family recommendation (thanks Steph!) we headed for lunch at a New York institution.  Barney Greengrass opened it’s doors in 1908 on the upper west side and is where the locals go to eat.  Our Sunday lunch was a special treat and a great cultural experience.  We had to queue outside for half an hour before we were seated but the food and the atmosphere was very New York.

We then caught a subway down to Greenwich Village, known as just the Village to us locals.  In it’s day Greenwich Village was a bohemian enclave where styles, attitudes and thinking were different to the rest of New York.  Today it is somewhat gentrified and a bit more polished than in the past but we enjoyed walking through the area before climbing the stairs up to a somewhat recent addition to this huge city’s attractions.

The High Line is a narrow elevated walkway which was previously an old disused railway line due for demolition but saved by a group of concerned citizens and converted into this novel 1.5 mile (2.5 km) green walkway, only opening in 2009. 

Today it is a wonderful stroll through the tall buildings, catching glimpses of the Hudson River, the rich gardens covering the walk and the original railway lines acting as flower beds.  And of course, like everywhere else we’ve gone in New York, there were hordes of people enjoying the Sunday afternoon, almost shoulder to shoulder, multi-cultural to the max, everyone in good cheer.

The next day was our last in New York and we still had a long list of things to see and do in the downtown area.  After getting off the subway at City Hall we enjoyed a wonderful walk across the Brooklyn Bridge on a crispy clear Autumn morning.  Of course we were joined a thousand other like-minded people but hey, we’re in New York, a city of almost nine million people, you can’t avoid the crowds.

The Brooklyn Bridge was – and still is – an engineering marvel.  Built in 1883 to join the two boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn, the bridge symbolised the innovation, development and progress of a nation still healing from the Civil War. 

We walked all the way across and back again, loving the views in all directions, the people watching, warming sunshine and the buzz of being in such an amazing place.  We’ve walked the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and we rated this walk just as highly.

Downtown New York City has many famous buildings but for all visitors there is one place that can’t be missed – and it’s where buildings used to be.  The World Trade Towers were destroyed in a terrorist attack on September 11, 2001 and today the 9/11 Memorial and Museum is a beautiful, impressive and very moving tribute to the 3,000 people who lost their lives that day. 

Julie and I visited the two reflective pools that mark the footprint to the two towers before visiting the museum which is housed in what was basically the underground carpark of the towers’ complex.  The museum, which opened in 2011, was absolutely outstanding in every way – a fully immersive journey through the events of the world leading up to the day, graphic and moving detail of the day itself and much of the aftermath, including how the site arrived at being this worldclass museum.  It was a sobering and reflective experience to say the least but a fitting tribute to those who were lost and those left behind.

We moved further downtown, walking down famous Wall St and standing outside the New York Stock Exchange and then found the Charging Bull statue that symbolises what Wall St is all about.  We walked down to the South Ferry terminal before limping home via the subway and the all too familiar 158 bus that took us under the Hudson River and back to our hotel.  One thing for sure, we know how to pack it in. 

Sadly, but a little relieved, we woke up to a travel day, leaving New York and travelling by bus to Washington DC.  This was our first experience on intercity buses in America and we were expecting a full hard core cultural experience but instead we had a very pleasant four and a half hour trip down the I95 in a clean and uncrowded bus.  And it seemed crazy, at least to us, we passed through four states to get there – New York, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland before arriving in DC.

From Union Station in Washington DC we caught the metro out of the city, across another state line into Virginia where we had a motel booked for the night in Falls Church.  All part of our master plan, this positioned us well to catch up with two groups of friends who we hoped to see in the days to come. 

More scenes from the suburbs near Washington DC where we spent the night.

A final word on New York.  After seeing hundreds of movies and TV shows based in New York it had become a bit of a cliché to us but I can tell you it lived up to all our expectations – it was exactly as advertised but completely on steroids.  It was amazing, chaotic, beautiful, gritty, shiny, frenetic, tasty, enlightening and crazy.  We loved it all. 

We rode the famous New York Subway like pros, we fed our faces on so many bagels we lost count, we saw a Broadway show and sang to the music, we had a couple beautiful green walks through Central Park, we saw more museums than I thought I would ever want to see (and loved them!), we ate from the street food carts, we got lost and found repeatedly.  Most of all we mingled with the people of New York, in all their different shapes, sizes and colours, and every encounter was friendly, helpful and wonderfully positive.  As they say, a great place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there!