We did however manage to cram in some of the main sights - both botanically and the more famous tourist ones like the Empire State, Statue of Liberty, Broadway, Central Park, MOMA, etc. We even managed to meet up with a fellow blogger, although we sadly, didn't get chance to visit his garden - next time!
Whilst away we managed to blog a few times, taking advantage of free public wifi that seems to be so prevalent in New York, everywhere from Starbucks to Museums and public spaces seemed to have free wifi available, something that the UK should work harder to catch up on.
We were able to share short "postcard" style blogs from, Bryant Park, The Rockefeller Centre, The High Line and the NY Botanic Gardens.
The Botanic Gardens will feature in one or two posts in the future as it has simply so much botanical eye candy on offer. This is out of the center of New York City and required a 40 minute train ride from Grand Central into the Bronx area. The parkland of the Botanic Gardens reminded us of the UK, but with a very American style of the buildings.
Timing wise, Mid September worked well for us, the weather was still warm, reaching 33°C (90°f) in the middle of the week - and believe me, hiking across Central Park from the Natural History Museum to the Metropolitan Museum is not fun in that heat! Although the view was lovely, going via Belvedere Castle.
Belevedere Castle was built in 1869 as a Victorian folly on the summit of Vista Rock, the park's second-highest natural elevation. Belvedere means 'beautiful view' in Italian and the castle provides great vistas across Central Park and City beyond. It was designed as an additional feature of the Central Park "Greensward" plan by the architects Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mould after they were appointed to oversee the park's construction in 1865.
As well as the "Plant" related trips we spent a day in Lower Manhattan, visiting the Statue of Liberty (sadly Ellis Island was still closed following Hurricane Sandy), Battery Park, and the 911 Memorial, which we visited just 2 days prior to the anniversary.
We strolled down to Wall Street, which felt much more like London than other parts of New York, with the street layouts much more disorganised than Central Manhattan. I was also surprised how underwhelming the NY Stock exchanged looked from the outside. We completed the day with a view across to Brooklyn Bridge before heading up to China town to eat.
As we were staying on 42nd Street we were right in the heart of things, not far from Grand Central, Times Square, and the many Skyscrapers that make up the street scene. We just had to go up the most famous and had trips up to the top of both the Rockefeller and Empire State buildings, and of course we were in the middle of the shopping area.
Despite being surrounded by so many famous shops and department stores we were actually very restrained in what we brought back, probably as we were thinking of the renovations going on at home, rather than seeking out new things for ourselves.
London to New York is a fairly easy trip, we are not too far from Heathrow Airport and there are lots of airlines that cover the route. My dad was kind enough to drop us off for our flight so we didn't even have to get their under our own steam. We flew at 9.30 so it was a nice civilised time, perhaps if we had an earlier flight it would have made sense to stay in one of the airport hotels the night before.
With so much to pack in we did miss out on one or two things we had hoped to see, such as Brooklyn Botanical Garden, Cats Diner (which we had seen on various TV shows), Ellis Island, I would also like to see more of Central Park as we only explored the lower, more southerly section.
Hopefully we shall get to return before too long.
Gaz
