New York: The big āporo

Ok, so this is going to be a long one, because while we were only in NYC for five nights, we packed a lot in, and loved the joint so have to share all the details. We haven't even ranted about the bagels or the service! You ready?
We've split this into areas of the City for ease of reading.

Lou and the famous bull near Wall St

Walking the highline on a magnificent day

Take me out to the ball game

First up, Midtown.
Since our accommodation (Candlewood Suites) was located in mid town, just near Times Square, we spent the bulk of our time in this area. We spent the better part of one day walking around visiting Times Square (didn’t find the free museum and nice clean loos until our final day), the Empire State building, the Chrysler building, Public Library, St Patrick’s Cathedral, the Rockerfeller Centre, FAO Schwarz (yep we jumped around on the big piano), Grand Central Station, and an excellent tour of the UN.
We also popped into Justin Timberlake's restaurant Southern Hospitality in Hell's kitchen and stuffed ourselves silly.

Top tip: When you get to the Empire State building there’s a huge queue of people wanting to head to the observation deck and touts selling tickets to queue jump. From the 5th Ave entrance, it looks like you can’t get in without a ticket. You can though – just walk around the corner to 33rd St and use one of those entrances to have a good look around the lobby. Of course if you want the view, you'll have to queue!

The view from the top of the Met, central park

Uptown

Plenty to do and see here, and a really different feel to the rest of the city (might be all that money rolling around?) We spent a fab afternoon mooching around Central Park and having a wee nap in the sunshine before heading to the excellent

Metropolitan Museum and taking in the American wing and the view from the roof top bar, before wandering home past Park Ave.

Top tip: the price at museums (usually around $20-25) is in fact the ‘recommended’ price. You can just pay what you want – but you do have to pay something. At the ticket desk, just say you’d like to pay $10 or whatever, and that’s just fine - no snooty looks or anything!

Downtown

Downtown also has plenty to offer, including Wall Street, Southport (great for a drink in the sunshine), China Town, Little Italy (where we had the biggest pizza ever at Lombardi's), and the excellent 'Highline' walk along a disused rail track, which now provides a spot of green in the city and great views.

Around town

Brooklyn

The old girl

One of Lou’s old school friends lives in Brooklyn, so we walked across the bridge one evening to take in views of the city and the Statue of Liberty to have a meal in Brooklyn. As well as seeing a different part of New York, we enjoyed a fantastic meal at a local Mexican, Fonda, with Simone and her husband Geoff.

Top tip: None of the guide books told us how to get onto the bridge, so we had to ask a friendly Policewoman. The pedestrian entrance is right by City Hall.

Ellis Island/Statue of Liberty

We like to think we don’t act like travelling rookies so much these days, but we were the day we decided to get a boat to Ellis Island to visit the Immigration Museum. After 40 minutes in the queue to buy tickets, we did a reccie to see how long the queue through security and to the boat was. We estimated 1000+ people and an hour and a half, so we called that idea quits. Instead, we booked online that night (no extra charge) which meant no queues. In fact, we booked for a 10am sailing and at that time of the day there wasn’t much of a queue at all, so if you don’t want to book online, get there around 9am to minimise time wasted.

Lou rockin' a peace keeper's helmet at the UN

Times Square at night

The boat cruise was great, got up really close to the Statue of Liberty, but we didn’t get off on the island (you can, but there’s not much to see). Instead we continued on to Ellis Island where we spent 3 hours exploring the immigration museum and learning about what immigrants to the US used to go through. Interestingly, the questions they were asked (can you support yourself, can you work, are you a criminal) are much the same as UK immigration ask Dean each time he renews his visa, so things haven’t really changed. Also interesting was that the US really welcomed immigrants from 1892-24, so only 2 percent of those coming into Ellis Island got sent back. They have an excellent search facility so we looked up Yarralls and von Ds to see if any of them had come through, and since found out Lou's Great Grandfather went through there in the 1920s from Scotland.

Yankee Stadium

Whoop, it was free t-shirt day when we visited the Yankees. We do like free stuff! Enjoyed the game and atmosphere, and gorged on the obligatory fried foods, beer and crackerjack.

Some more tips to get the most from your stay

Getting into town from JFK: Very easy and fast on public transport. Take the air train (don’t need a ticket just yet) to Jamaica. Before exiting, purchase a combined airtrain/LIRR ticket (around $13) and exit. Get on the LIRR to Penn Station and you’re there in about 20 minutes.

Metro tickets: If you’re there for 3 or more days, it’s probably worth buying a 3 day pass. We didn’t, and even though we spent most of our time walking, we used the metro enough to warrant it. If you don’t get a pass, you can just buy one metro card and pass it through to the person you’re with – you don’t need one each like you do in London.

Tipping: a good rule of thumb is to just double the tax added to your bill (around 8%) which gives a 16% tip.

Most department stores (and certainly Macy's where we took advantage) have visitor cards, offering a 10% discount for out of towners.

Take your passport, as the kiwi driver's licence might not cut it as ID for alcohol. Dean and our friend Rod spent about 20 minutes arguing with various members of staff at the Yankees who wouldn't accept their NZ drivers' licences as proof of age. They won and we got the beer in the end, but save yourself the trouble!

And to finish, here's the locals at the 9th Ave food festival on while we were there, awesome.