New York or the "Big Apple" as its affectionately known is a hussling bussling city thats home to Wall Street, Times Square, NBC, Central Park, the Brooklyn Bridge, Empire State Building and hundreds of celebrities. Everyone, who is anyone, wants to be seen in New York yet there is still plenty to entertain the kids on a family holiday.
We grabbed ourselves a New York City explorer pass and set off straight to the tourist buses that circle the city. You can get passes that last 1, 2, 3 days or even longer. These hop on hop off tourist buses cover all the districts and sights in New York including Manhattan, Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island. Your explorer pass allows you entry to many attractions and saves you a fortune toughest job is deciding which ones to do.
We decided that going to the top of the Empire State Building was a must plus a cruise to see the Statue of Liberty, a horse and carraige ride in Central Park, taking in a show on Broadway, ice skating at the Rockefeller centre, a visit to the World trade centre site and a tour of Madison Square Garden. You can spend hours just looking around the shops in Times Square, there is a huge M and M World which is just amazing, everything you can imagine branded with every colour of M and M's. Right nearby is a Toys'R'Us store with a huge ferris wheel in the middle of it. There is a fantastic Hard Rock Cafe and Hershey's Chocolate shop plus restaurants, gift shops and neon lights as far as you can see will amaze little and big kids. There are always a huge range of shows on Broadway and you will find at least one suitable to take the kids.
We stayed at the Radisson New York Hotel Martinique which was fantastically located easy walking distance to everything. New York is quite compact and really easy to get around so a great place if you love walking, eating, drinking and people watching when on holidays. Yellow cabs are everywhere and all though a little scary they will get you quickly and efficeintly anywhere around the city and can be hailed just on the side of the road. Street vendors sell delicious food and there was actually quite a bit of variety from pretzels, coffee and hot dogs through to wraps, kebabs, juice and fruits.
Being a massive Seinfeld fan, one of my highlights was seeing some of the set locations from the series, Monks diner, the soup Nazi's kitchen (which is now closed down sadly). On the tourist buses the guides point out all the stars apartments plus restaurants where scenes where shot from a range of movies, its actually really interesting! We also joined the night bus to head over the bridge to Brooklyn to see the New York City skyline at night which really was beautiful.
We had three days in New York and I felt it wasnt really long enough to see everything I wanted too, as we had to rush a little! However accommodation for four of us was quite expensive so that was the main reason for our shorter stay plus it was February and quite chilly with a few small patches of snow still around, however that didnt really bother us. I would definetely like to return again and spend more time exploring the outlying areas and just chilling out in the Big Apple!
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