After our first holiday together in 2013, time had come for me and Renate to go on a much bigger trip. So in the summer of 2014 we stayed eleven nights in New York!
We started out in our hometown of Bergen, Norway. Our flight took approximately ten hours before we arrived at JFK Airport.
While I had visited the US once before, this was the first time for Renate. It was also the first time in New York for me.
One of the first things we did was to take some tour buses around the city, to get a lay of the land before traversing it on foot.
It was incredible to finally see this city that we had seen depicted so many times in movies, video games, etc. I actually sort of knew my way around already, thanks to all the games I have played set in New York.
Since we loved the ‘We Will Rock You’ Queen musical when we visited London the year before, we decided to check out Rock Of Ages. We did not like it very much, and it’s too bad we didn’t watch something else on Broadway. Oh well, maybe next time.
We wanted to check out Times Square, but it was way too hectic there for our liking, so we kept a wide berth of the place for the rest of our stay. But we did enjoy the many specialty stores there and in the area, especially the Nintendo store!
I have a life-long fear of heights. But when you are in New York you pretty much have to go up the 102 floors of the Empire State Building. We decided that it would be good for me with a practice-skyscraper. So we started with the 70 floors up to the ‘Top of the Rock’Â observation deck of the Rockefeller Center.
We spent a lot of time in Central Park, as it was good to get away from the noisy city. It is amazing how this park surrounded by a giant city managed to fool us into thinking we were in actual nature. I think New York would be pretty much unbearable to live in without its parks, but with them it is a great city.
There is also so many cool things located right next to Central Park, like the Guggenheim Museum!
We enjoyed the tour buses so much that we wanted to take one of their night rides. You have not seen the New York skyline until you’ve seen it by night!
To give us a proper view of the skyline, the bus took us over the Brooklyn Bridge. You get a really good view of the Manhattan skyline from Brooklyn. But as we were crossing the bridge it started pouring down and the sky cracked up with lightning. Everyone on the bus got soaking wet. We even had to buy some dry shoes the next day, as they were all still wet. Still, really fun tour!
Then it was time for me to face my fears. It was time to go up the Empire State Building.
Renate had no problem with the heights. She actually scared me a few times when she wanted to take pictures close to the railing. I on the other hand was terrified all the time we were up there.
One thing Renate did not realize was that I was scared simply from knowing how high up I was, not necessarily from seeing the heights. So when we got to the gift shop at the end, she started browsing. Obviously thinking it would be ok since there were no windows there. All while I was pissing my pants! Still, we bought a pretty nice model of the skyscraper, as a prize for “conquering” the building.
After all that excitement we needed to cool down with some calmer activities. So we visited the American Museum of Natural History, and Ripley’s Believe It or Not!
Washington D.C. is located relatively close to New York, so we decided to visit the capital as part of a guided day tour.
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