It rained for the first 3 days which was a little disapointing, but on Thursday the sun came out and New York was a completely different city. As recommened we did the Greenwich Village food tour, which was brilliant, well worth the money and very yummy. Being a food tour leader could be my new vocation in life! Greenwich Village is beautiful and very quaint.
Ground Zero was nothing like I imagined it to be. To be honest I had no idea what I was expecting but it was quite incredible. Having not been to New York before I hadn't seen in person what the towers had looked like apart from pictures but when we were there it was quite hard to imagine how they had stood and exactly how big they were. The whole of the financial district is very impressive mainly due to the size and enormity of the buildings and the number of people in one small area.
From the Financial District we went up to Little Italy and Chinatown, both of which were really colourful and had some amazing food smells. I am pretty sure that given the chance I could have spent the whole day looking in deli's and eating. I would like to see both areas again in the sunshine as it was overcast and grey when we were there. Something for the futue.
Central Park was something else. We of course did the compulsary horse and carriage ride and were told in major detail where certain areass of the park were used for different scene's in Home Alone Part Two!! Our horse was called Brains and certainly looked like he had more than the man controlling him. Anyway the park was so quiet and as people have said you forget that you are in the middle of the busiest city in the world. We saw the Alice in Wonderland statue and Strawberry Fields and the boating lake and basically wandered aimlessly around until we both decided a trip to Bloomingdales was in order.
I could spend a lot of money in NY. From the Saturday market in the village to Bloomingdales and Macy's I had an urge to take part and spend spend spend!! Luckily the little brain power that was in use at the time kicked some common sense into me and a little voice in my head said "save the money for Vegas!!"
We spent our last night in an Italian that we visited on the Food Tour. The restaurant was small and heaving and people were being turned away at the door constantly. The food was exquisit and the wine far too drinkable! As our last meal in the first city that we have visited on our adventure it could not have been more perfect. To round the night off before heading back to Hoboken we had our Manhatten in Manhatten and one to many glasses of wine in a French Bistro.
Needless to say we were both a little jaded when we left to catch the bus to DC on the Sunday.
