New York, Neeeeew Yoooooooooork

After we took the bus to New York we arrived in Secaucus that’s a small town 15 min by bus from NY.  Here we stayed 2 nights. The other nights we stayed in a hotel just steps away from the Times Square.

New York cannot be described in a couple of sentences but it’s definitely a crazy place. All your senses are instantly activated. You hear a lot of horns from taxi drivers, ambulances, police cars and firefighter cars. Then you hear a lot of noise from restaurants, people who want to sell you a bottle of water for 1 USD, bus tickets or God knows what. Everywhere you smell food from every possible place on earth. There are a lot of people on the streets, for example in Times Square you would not know what time it is only by looking at the number of people. At 2 AM there are just as many as at 2 PM. This city never ever sleeps.

You can have a very good view of the city by going up on one of the main towers, the Empire State Building and the Rockefeller Center. The views at night from the Empire State Building are just breathtaking and in front of the Rockefeller Center is the famous Rockefeller Plaza where they have the big Christmas tree during December.  The Manhattan Skyline can also be nicely seen from the boats that go to Liberty Island or from Brooklyn. Other nice buildings that we saw are the buildings of Chrysler, the UN, the Trump World Tower and the Flat Iron.

We also went to the 9/11 Memorial for which the largest design competition in history was organized. They received 5201 submissions from 63 nations and the one that won consists of a forest of trees and two square waterfalls that stand on the place of the two towers. Currently a new tower is under construction, the Freedom Tower which will be the highest building (104-story and 541m) in New York when it is finished. We also went to the New York Stock Exchange but we couldn’t go in because visitors are not allowed anymore since the 9/11 attacks.

One amazing thing we’ve seen or done

The most amazing things we saw in New York were

• the Times Square –the amount of people that you see here is incredible
• the 4^th of July Fireworks. We had the pleasure to meet Tania over Couchsurfing and we went to her building where we had the best view on the fireworks from the 31^st floor. Take a look at the video.