New York Stories: Tourists and Towers.

We had quite a list for New York, organised into days that made sense for midtown, uptown, downtown and the 'Fidi' ; this is a sense of some of those days, but these posts will not be in order (obviously - this is a random observations blog, after all).

After a long sleep and 24 hours in NYC, we started to feel a sense of place and location and struck out to see things. Our first biggy was the Empire State building, so it was along West 49th, right onto Fifth Avenue and then on we went until we saw the biggest, iconic tower we could find, and there we were! Jemma has been before and said the queuing was outrageous, so we were on the door for half past eight and it paid off, strolling straight through with our pre-purchased New York pass. The flip side of the early start was that the mist had not quite cleared, but the views were still grand.

We took a lot of steps after that to a location that had been on my list for a couple of decades: the Flatiron! Less attractive to Jemma but a beacon for me was our follow up to this, Forbidden Planet on Broadway, plus a constant smattering of photo opportunities for trucks, fire engines, bridges, buildings and geeky stuff.

Day 1in the city was a 12 mile walking tour de force of New York at full charge with the very long day ending on a lark about in Times Square. Fantastic!