Our first day in the big apple was quite a day. With our 'empire state of mind' we checked into our hotel early in the morning, it's on times square, really nice. Then started our first tour, a food tour of Greenwich Village where we sampled falafel, two types of pizza (crab and artichoke!), rice balls and cup cakes as well as getting a bit of history about the area, it was delicious!
We then headed back to the hotel to get snazzed up because I'd told sarah there was a surprise she needed to be dressed up for, we then headed for central park and had a lovely horse carriage ride, and most of you probably know the rest, I proposed to sarah and she said yes!
We then walked over Brooklyn bridge as the sun was setting and went for an amazing dinner at The River Cafe which is an amazing restaurant that looks out across the river to the iconic New York skyline. It was quite surreal. We celebrated with Champagne and incredible food.
Day 2, Sarah mandated a shopping day, all day! Apparantly there will be 3 more all day shopping days, I hope I can survive this! We spent most of the day in Bloomingdales - if there is one thing that New York does well it is department stores.
We signed up to a couple of free walking tours (well you do pay - but you pay the tour guide what you think the tour was worth in cash), which was a great way to get our bearings in such a busy city. One of the tours was 6 hours of walking, taking us all around downtown, through the financial district and up to Greenwich Village and the Meatpacking district. Our tour guide was a sterotypical 'New Yorker' and provided us a few laughs throughout the tour - yelling at taxi drivers when they got in the way, even yelling at police men when we were trying to the cross the road. She was born and bred in New York so gave us a bit of a run down on what the boroughs used to be like when she was growing up. e.g., the houses in the most expensive suburbs which now sell for between $8m - $12m were sold off for only $50k in the 70s/80s because the suburbs were so rough!
The Highline was another highlight. This was once a freight train track raised 30ft above Manhattan that delivered meat from the port to the slaughter houses and meatmarket of the 'Meat Packing district'. As the meat companies moved out of the area and the use of road trucks increased the train tracks stopped being used and started to be demolished. A group of citizens (including many high profile celebs such as Diane Von Furstenberg) rallied to have to tracks perversed. It is now a national park with wild flowers and grass growing over the tracks, a paved food path, sun loungers and street food vans dotted along (mmm peanut butter icecream sandwiches!).
We spent one evening at a Yankees vs Red Sox game, which was a lot of fun even though we didn't understand very much of what was actually happening (I'm still not sure who won) we just cheered along with everyone else. We sat in the bleachers with all the rowdy college kids eating hot dogs and drinking beer. This was one of the only places we really saw the huge quantities of food that Americans are famed for eating - you want some chicken and chips? Well, it comes in a bucket here!
We also spent a morning in Williamsburg which is where the young and hip live in New York. I found a cafe owned by Australians to ensure we could get good coffee with our marmite on toast, (along with the rest of the hipsters sitting on their Mac Book Pros). Williamsburg is unlike the rest of the city, its quaint, relaxed and has more of a village feel to it. It's amazing that you are only a couple of subway stops from the hussle and bussle of Manhattan.
On our final day, we toured Mid-town (Times Square, Waldorf Asteria, The Rockafeller Centre). We found out that incredibily Times Square has quite a lot of empty office buildings because the owners make more money plastering it with advertising signs. In fact, at least 18% of the surface of every building has to be covered in advertising in order to keep the 'feel of Times Square'. We finished off in Grand Central Station, which is a beautiful space. In the 60's, it was set to be demolished (The Americans had a habit of tearing down beautiful historic buildings becuase they were old), until the NYC Landsmarks Preservation Commission (fronted by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis) stepped in and saved it. This would be an amazing station to arrive in every morning - it's filled with chandeliers (which were thought to be bronze but turned out to be 24 ct gold!), a central clock is with $24m (solid gold with 4 opal faces) and the ceiling is painted with a series of constallations (except it is painted backwards and is supposed to represent the view that god has when looking down on us).
The biggest highlight was the food: We ate a lot in New York - cupcakes in the Village, fine dining on the Upper East Side, burgers in Brooklyn and Jollys favourite: BBQ in Harlem.