Weather: Bright, sunny and hot - again.
Got up really early today to make my way over to The Empire State Building. I arrived there 10 minutes before it opened at 8am. There was already a queue. As I already had my ticket, I went through the security check and straight through to the elevators.
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| View from the top of The Empire State Building |
I started to walk uptown to Central Park and to take photos of the Guggenheim when I remembered that I hadn't been to Grand Central Station yet. I was the only one there taking photos but not for very long. While I was doing this I noticed that the ceiling had some kind of design on it. After looking through the camera lens, I discovered that the pictures were star constellations. They're very hard to see but they are certainly there.
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| Grand Central Station |
Then it was off to the other side of town to Central Park and the Guggenheim. It was a veeeeeeeeeeeery long way! What the hell was I thinking! Once I reached Central Park, I had to sit down. I was so tired but I was determined to keep going. If you can imagine a grid where The Empire State building is on 33rd Street and the Guggenheim is between 88th and 89th streets, that's how far I walked today. Don't get me wrong, I did have moments where I almost gave up but I was so close to my goal....only to be disappointed. Once you've seen the Bilbao Guggenheim, this one just doesn't compare, although it was the first.
By the time I walked back to the hotel, I collapsed on the bed and didn't move for a very long time. At 3pm I had to meet my tour director in the lobby. I received my documents, luggage tags and was told that no one seemed to have received her Welcome Letter which stated what was going to happen on the first day. I luckily recieved a telephone message from her yesterday, but didn't listen to it until this morning.
Apparently, our Welcome Reception was going to be set on a boat while cruising the harbour. I advised her that I'd already done the whole cruise thing and that I wasn't going to go tonight. She was fine with it and advised breakfast time and luggage time for tomorrow - both 7am.
I took a small nap then started typing up my backlog of blogs and downloading my photos.
Tomorrow, my tour starts so it's goodbye to New York, hello Amish country.
All in all, I was quite surprised how simple it is to get around in New York - Streets run South to North (Downtown to uptown) and Avenues from East to West. Also, how safe I actually felt. There is so much police presence everywhere you go and I really liked that. I didn't even get lost once and I helped a lady with directons to St Patrick's Cathedral today. She mistook me for a local and was surprised that I could help her.
