Posted on Thursday, 12 March 2015

In a city that rises so high, you have to get used to operating lifts – or ‘elevators' – pretty quickly. The lift system in our palatial hotel just off Madison Square was a tad confusing at first because we had to enter our desired floor into a central keypad then get assigned a lift, rather than choosing one ourselves. But after a few of these vertical journeys my wife and I saw how efficient the process was – especially important for a big hotel.

And this really was a big hotel – new, as well. It even had a gym that would give my local London affair a run for its money (not always the case in hotels), as well as a generously sized pool complete with its own waterside bar – which my wife adored. The staff were very accommodating, highlighted by them being quick to give us a new room on our second night after we were disturbed by some construction work going on next door.

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Compared to London museums, the most prominent of which are of course free, the $25 "entry price" to the Metropolitan Museum of Art did seem prohibitively expensive. However, we discovered that this was only a recommended payment and that any sum over a dollar is enough to gain entrance. But we did feel compelled to pay the full recommended fee.

New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA (vvoevale/Bigstock.com)

And four hours later, as we sipped excellent coffee and nibbled chocolate cake in the Met's cafe, we decided that the recommended $25 fee was actually well worth it. My wife could have spent two days in the Roman Art, Islamic Art, Egyptian Art and Medieval Art sections. For myself, the special exhibitions on Cezanne's wife and Cubism were especially memorable. We might have stayed for much longer, but we only had four days to enjoy New York. Buoyed by caffeine and sugar, we returned ourselves to bustling New York, turned a corner, then drifted into the calming green space of one of the world's most famous parks.

New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA (Alex9500/Bigstock.com)

Central Park

We actually went to Central Park in search of the Loeb Boathouse Restaurant, but failed to find it (we had forgotten to load the appropriate map onto our phones and had no local network access). Instead we found a (rather cheaper) bagel and coffee stand. As we enjoyed our impromptu and typically NYC snack, my wife's interest was seized by a line of horses and carriages. She loves horses and I knew there was no way we going to leave the park without a ride.

It was pretty costly for such a short trip, but a wonderful clip-clopping way to experience Central Park as night falls and to see the matrix of little lights flick on, one by one, high up above us: I imagined the New Yorkers inside – the wealthy widow, the tired businessman, the blocked writer with two yapping dogs. I realised these characters were amorphous Susan Sarandons, Christian Bales, Jack Nicholsons.

Horse carriage in New York, USA (Alex9500/Bigstock.com)

Wandering around this city in daylight gives one a certain sense of drama – but at night it feels very much like a Hollywood stage set. Who knows who you might spot? The Wolf of Wall Street in a sharp suit? American Psycho exiting a hardware store? The Ghostbusters angling their proton weapons up at an enormous smiling marshmallow man?

My wife lamented the lack of signs in the park, but I liked the ad hoc nature of our evening there – it added to the magic.

We vowed to return and find the Loeb Boathouse Restaurant as we meandered back to our hotel on foot, which took a full two hours including numerous but unhurried wrong turns.

Freedom Tower

A bright blue New York morning should be a happy phenomenon, but for me it was reminiscent of that fateful day back in 2001. Long before we boarded our plane at Heathrow we decided to visit the spot where more than 3,000 New Yorkers perished, to see the new Freedom Tower – or One World Trade Center, as it is also known.

West Street and World Trade Center, NYC, USA (IndustryAndTravel/Bigstock.com)

We gazed up at what is now the tallest skyscraper in the western hemisphere – measuring 1,792ft at its very tip – and recalled the two immense towers that stood before it, along with those terrible scenes on that sunny September day 14 years ago.

Freedom Tower, New York, USA (Alex9500/Bigstock.com)

Staten Island Ferry

The 20 minute walk from the Freedom Tower to the famous Staten Island ferry gave us time to enjoy the gleaming towers above us; they make London's scattering of skyscrapers look rather low-key.

At Whitehall Street in lower Manhattan we boarded the big old ferry bound for St. George on Staten Island. This service carries more than 22 million passengers each year – that's an astonishing 70,000 people a day. While I find most ferry journeys a little dull after the minor thrill of leaving dock, the views from the boat were remarkable, and gave us a real sense of the scale of this city, where over eight million live, work and play. The Big Apple is surely one of those few cities that feel as if it is truly at the heart of things.

Staten Island Ferry, New York, USA (mshch/Bigstock.com)

NYC may not be the centre of the universe, but you would be forgiven for thinking it was.

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