New York City

We arrived in New York on Monday, around 2pm after a coach delay and traffic getting into the city. We took the subway from Port Authority to Grand Central Terminal and then had to walk in the thirty degree heat with our suitcases to our hostel. We took some time to get our bearings and figure out what we wanted to do on each day and then headed out to explore. We had a bit of walk around the area we were staying in, and saw the UN Building, the Chrysler Building, Grand Central Station and Bryant Park. We were meeting up with some friends from camp at Times Square so we walked there as the sun was setting.

The next day we had booked a ferry trip to Liberty Island to see the Statue of Liberty. We boarded the ferry at Battery Park on the south side of Manhattan, where it took around ten minutes to travel across to Liberty Island. Once you arrive on the island you have as long as you want to explore and take photos of the statue and of the amazing views of Manhattan across the water. I used my 55-250mm lens to get some great building shots and close ups of Liberty.

After docking back at Battery Park, we got a hot dog and a pretzel to give us some energy for the rest of the day as we were doing quite a lot of walking. From Battery Park, we walked to 9/11 Memorial. It's a really beautiful memorial and the atmosphere there was calm and reflective. The memorial is situated right at the bottom of the new World Trade Center building, so we took in some great views of that too. From there, we took the subway to Brooklyn Bridge where we walked along the footbridge to the middle. The bridge has great views back into Manhattan as well as across the water into Brooklyn. By the time we had walked back along the bridge, we were feeling very tired so we decided to go back to our room for a rest before we met our friends again for dinner.

On Wednesday, we booked to go to Top of the Rock, the viewing deck at The Rockefeller Center. The view from the top was amazing, even if it was a cloudy day. Again, I used my long lens to get some great shots of the Empire State Building and just general views of Manhattan. Later on, we went back to Times Square so we could see it during the day and also to do some souvenir shopping. I much preferred Times Square at night as there is loads more going on and all the billboards look a lot more impressive when they're lit up. After Times Square, we headed back to the room for a small rest before we went to a baseball game in the evening. We went to see the New York Mets play Miami Marlins at Citi Field in Queens. I've wanted to go to a baseball game for a while and I really enjoyed it. By the end of the game, I was really getting into it and the atmosphere was amazing.

The next day we had planned to explore Central Park and go to the zoo. Central Park Zoo is small and doesn't have a lot of big animals, e.g. Lions and Tigers but it's a really nice zoo. We got to see Snow Leopards and a Sea Lion show.

After the zoo, we walked north in Central Park as we were meeting some more camp friends for lunch. We walked towards the model boating pond and the Alice in Wonderland statue and then out and past the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There was loads more of Central Park I wanted to see, but unfortunately over lunch it started raining really heavily and we got drenched, so decided to call it a day and head back to the hostel to dry off. Central Park will definitely be top of my list whenever I go back to New York.