After a long flight of 13 hours on air, we finally landed at the John F.Kennedy Airport, New York.
we took the famous New York city yellow cab to Manhattan, being the place where we put up, and the taxi ride cost us $40. This is a flat rate imposed on all taxi originating from the airport to Manhattan, similar to that of the coupon system in KL Airport.
Our hotel, the Gerhswin is located right smack in the centre of 5th Avenue, Manhattan. The Empire State Building was like 2 blocks away and it was surrounded by so many shops and retail outlets. Highly recommended if you want to stay near to the shopping district.
I really love the room which was prepared to us. We were informed that we've been upgraded to Deluxe room to our delight. For me the room was nicely decorated to reflect the art-deco of New York lifestyle.
awesome view of Manhattan skylines.........how i wish i have this view everyday.......
as we were tired, we didnt explore much of the city except the surrounding...and especially admiring the world's famous Empire State Building before our own eyes.........
We got up early the next morning and headed 2 blocks away to have our breakfast at a small Pakistani restaurant. It's actually easy to maneuver your way around Manhattan as the buildings were systematically built in blocks or squares so you just need to know in which block is your origin and your destination. We had a simple breakfast of Indian spiced tea and flat bread with omelette. How i missed all those spicy and oily Malaysian breakfast at that point of time! Need to note that there's a small mosque located next to the restaurant.
As we have booked ourselves in advanced for the hop-on-hop of bus tour, we made our way to Times Square, being the departing point for the bus. There are few distinct routes or loops for this bus being uptown or downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn. You also have option to take the night tour of Manhattan. As we held an open ticket for all of the loops, we decided to start with downtown Manhattan loop.
the ever vibrant and crowded Times Square........
the downtown loop will take you around the city centre among others 5th Avenue, Rockefeller Centre, Broadway, Central Park etc
Flatiron Building 5th Avenue.......
Manhattan Bridge
Waldorf Astoria Hotel
other famous places........
multi-million dollars apartment near Central Park.......
historical buildings/churches...............
to tell you the truth..we didnt even hop-off the bus but rather enjoyed the scenery from inside. There are so many places of attractions and we didnt have the energy nor time to personally explore each one of them. It was a pity but due to our limited days here, we decided the best option is to have overall views and pictures of the attractions.
There are so many museums, parks and zoos to be visited and not to mention all the interesting building around downtown Manhattan. The hop-on-hop off bus is the perfect choice for you to explore all these places as they are all covered in its routes.You may choose to hop-off the bus at its dedicated stops to visit all these places within your convenient. I dont think 1 day is sufficient for that though, but it's surely enough if you, like me, prefer to do the sightseeing on-board. Even that will let you cover the downtown loop and to explore the uptown loop, you'll need another day, as i will feature in my next installation of my Journey North America Part 3-Kay2011
No comments:
Post a Comment