I Went to New York & All You Got Was This Stupid Blog Post
I’d heard the stories. I’d heard tales from people who have already been, “You’re not going to believe how big everything is! You’re not! You can’t imagine it!”
I’d had the recommendations on where to visit, where to eat, what to do, but what I really gathered from others’ excitable chatter about their time in the city was the sense that this place genuinely isn’t going to be like anything else I had seen before, and that no amount of wild hand gesticulations emphasising heights was going to be able to paint a picture in my mind.
I was right. As soon as we had made it out of the airport and had dropped our bags off at the hostel we made our jet lagged way to Times Square, and the sheer brightness of everything literally hits you in the face as soon as you round the corner. All of the (enormous) buildings are covered in adverts but, for the first time in my life at least, you actually want to look at these adverts.
The effort that had gone into creating some of the displays was more than anything I had ever seen in the UK before, and anything that London has to offer by way of huge brightly lit moving LCD advertisement screens seemed quaint in comparison. And by quaint, I mean virtually non existent.
By the time we got there it was gone midnight and the place was still packed and all the shops open. Forever 21, an American clothes retailer similar to H&M was trading from eight AM to three AM every single day. I cannot fathom why anyone would go shopping for a new pair of jeans at two in the morning, but I guess that’s what they mean when they say ‘The City That Never Sleeps.’
After steeling myself for a horrible wake up call after being awake for a whole 24 hours, I actually felt pretty refreshed after my pitiful 5 hours of kip and ready to face the first day of hardcore sightseeing. But first, we had bagged places in the audience of The Jeremy Kyle Show in America which was quite a novelty.
Image credit: Stacey Tonks
Much as it was a good insight into the world of working in television and the idea that I may be shown on television in January watching what is possibly renowned for being the Most Naff Programme On TV was amusing to all of us there, it felt quite voyeuristic at times and genuinely uncomfortable watching other people’s real life issues playing out right in front of you for supposed entertainment value.
After Jeremy Kyle, myself and five of the other girls on the tip had been lucky enough to secure a trip to meet Margi Conklin, the editor of Page Six Magazine which was in the News Corporation building. This was a highlight of the trip for me, she was not only lovely but extremely helpful and made the idea that we may actually end up working for a magazine seem possible, and not a hopeless dream for an ideal world which doesn’t actually exist.
After this, we were given free rein to do whatever we fancied, so we opted to go to Grand Central Station and explore the Christmas Markets there, which of course were lovely, especially hidden within the gorgeous archways of the station itself.
For dinner we went to a typical American style diner (had to be done!) and naturally ordered enormous burgers which came complete with half a gherkin, which I declined to eat.
Up at the crack of dawn again the next day, or at least eight AM, for a visit to Ground Zero. You can look around the Ground Zero site for free by yourself, but I would definitely recommend paying for the tour, which costs $15. The tour guide who showed us around had actually been inside the North Tower as it started to collapse, so he was able to give a really detailed and invested background and depth to the story that you could not have got by simply looking around the grounds yourself. This is definitely an emotional trip but worth it to find out a bit more about an important part of history.
After the tour we went and got a traditional huge slice of pizza from a greasy spoon looking cafe, and made our way to Soho for some more sightseeing. Unlike London’s upmarket, trendy Soho which I – perhaps naively – was expecting, Soho Manhattan Style was a bit shabby and after having to reroute ourselves to avoid a large scale fight we made our way back to the subway, as we were due to take a trip on the Staten Island ferry. On the ferry we got to see a really beautiful view of the Manhattan skyline at night. And it was completely free!
The view from the top of the Empire State Building
Visiting the Empire State Building is most definitely THE highlight of the trip for me, and most definitely recommended. ($20 to go up 87 floors of the Empire State building.)
The view from the top was like nothing I could possibly describe, skyscrapers as far as you can see, and despite the fact that the Empire State Building isn’t the tallest building by far, it was still a literally incredible view, although probably not so cracking if you have vertigo.
It was also the quietest place in New York we had been so far, and it was somewhat surreal after the unrelenting hustle and bustle.
On our last day we hit the shops to see what New York retail was like. Whilst there are a lot of shops in NY that you can find on your average British high street, of course the scale of these stores is immense. The flagship store for American department store Macy’s is in Herald Square, which is apparently the largest store in the world. This is very believable, with its nine enormous floors, every one of them decorated differently.
Before leaving the City, we went for some traditional ice skating fun in the beautiful Central Park, which cost $20 for two hours and you get to enjoy the scenic location in the centre of New York City, as well as the huge ice rink there, before collapsing onto the coach after four of the most intense, bewildering and tiring, but ultimately memorable days of my life.
