I think I awoke at around 6.30am in the morning, got ready and went to have breakfast in the cafe next to the hotel (The Prime Cafe). I ordered a pancake (with maple syrup) and a cup of tea. Here was me thinking that I’d get one pancake on my plate. Instead, I got about 3! Seriously couldn’t eat all of that! In fact, by the time I was finished, it looked like I’d barely touched the food on my plate. They were so yummy though.

We met with our tour group in the foyer of the hotel at 8.25am and Adrian introduced us to our bus driver, Diego. Once aboard the bus, introductions were given- 4 Scots, 2 Welsh, 3 Irish, 16 English, 1 Romanian (our guide) and 1 Colombian (our driver). Our plan for the day was to have a morning tour round New York. We picked up a local guide name Mary-Ann and started our tour.

Strawberry Fields
One of the first stops on the tour was the Strawberry Fields section of Central Park, which is just opposite the Dakota Apartments, where John Lennon was shot dead on the 8th December 1980. It was set-up as a memorial to John Lennon. While walking into Strawberry Fields, I was struck by how incredibly peaceful it was. Standing by the edge of the lake I forgot I was in New York, one of the largest cities in the world. It was a lovely day and I could have spent all day there, watching the squirrels running around (I’ve only seen them a handful of times in Scotland).

The entrance to Strawberry Fields contains a plaque relating to nations which endorse the memorial. Our local guide said that it had been dug up by people on a number of occasions, because they felt some of the nations listed were no longer peaceful. Also, there is a mosaic which has the title of Lennon’s most famous song written on it- “Imagine”. This is used as a gathering point on the anniversary of his death and his birthday. In addition to this, we were told that many people gathered here on September the 11th, hoping for peace.

On leaving the Fields, we passed some women with prams. I didn’t pay much attention but my mum and several other members of my tour group noticed something funny. Normally, one would expect a pram to contain a baby or two. Not in this case. These prams had dogs in them. I know- what?!

The Flatiron and round Central Park
After getting back on the bus, we headed half a mile along the road, to see the Flatiron Building. You might be thinking “what’s that?” but I guarantee, you will probably have seen it in the movies or on the tv. It’s a pretty neat piece of architecture and resembles an old-fashioned iron used by tailors.

Following this, we drove right round the edge of Central Park, going up to Harlem, then passing museums such as the Guggenheim. We saw other places such as the Waldorf Astoria hotel- the last of the grand, old hotels. One of the other things we saw on the tour was the giant inflatable rat, which was near Rockefeller Plaza. It was being used in a protest of some sort but I don’t know what it was about. We were then told we were heading to Ground Zero, a place I didn’t even know we’d be visiting don our tour.

Ground Zero
On the way there, we passed the World Trade Center Cross beside St Peter’s. This cross was found in the rubble of the World Trade Center and is a shrine to those who died in the attacks.

Once the bus had parked, we were led in the Winter Garden Atrium of the World Financial Center. We had lunch there at a place called Donalds- I had the most amazing buffalo-turkey-cheese sub.

After walking up the stairs inside the Atrium, we reached a large glass wall, essentially an observation deck over Ground Zero. I was nearly 14 years old on September the 11th 2001 and I remember watching the news in horror when I got home from school that day. After seeing it on tv, it felt weird standing that’s where such an appalling loss of life had occurred. I felt a mixture of emotions. Anger towards the terrorists who killed so many innocent people and ruined so many lives. Sadness, thinking of all those who lost their lives and had their families torn apart. Finally, I felt particularly impressed by the attitudes of the New Yorkers. Their determination to carry on, and not let the terrorists bring them down was inspiring. The size of the construction site where re-building is taking place really brought home the shear scale of the destruction that occurred. It must have been hellish living in Manhattan, amongst the aftermath of the attacks.

Now I’m not a religious person however, when the group was shown the Church which survived the attacks, I was amazed. I think it was called Trinity Church. All these huge modern buildings were destroyed but this relatively small church stood it’s ground amid chaos.

Some members of our tour group opted for a couple of optional tours, including a helicopter ride and a boat cruise. We ended up driving through the Meat Packing District to get to the terminal and we dropped them off.

The afternoon- Rockefeller Plaza and shopping!
The rest of us went back to the hotel. On the way there, we noticed these weird parking spaces. Where cars are stacked on top of each other, supported by a metal frame (that’s the best way I can think to describe them). I found a picture of what I mean on Flickr. Apparently, parking spaces in the part of Manhattan can go for as much as $250,000. Totally nuts!

We had a few hours free and I wanted to visit Rockefeller Plaza so my mum and I walked from 26th Street to 50th Street along 6th Avenue and the Avenue of the Americas. To tell the truth, we walked a couple of extra blocks then realised that we’d gone too far. Enroute, we walked past Bryant Park where everyone looked so relaxed, eating, chatting and playing French Bowls.

Finally, we made it to Rockefeller Plaza. Of course, this is where one of my favourite tv shows, 30 Rock is set. I wandered round the plaza, and had my picture taken in front of the Prometheus statue and of course, the 30 Rockefeller Plaza sign. Following that, we decided to go up the “Rock”.

I was surprised that there wasn’t a queue- my mum and I were able to walk straight into the elevator. We had to go through one bag check but it didn’t take long at all. A quick photo later and were were ready to get into the elevator to take us to the the top. The elevator was one hell of a high-speed ride- something like 60-something floors in about 40 seconds. My ears kept popping! Once up there though, it’s just amazing! Seriously, what a view! Although my hotel was closer to the Empire State Building, I went up the Top of the Rock so I could get the Empire State Building in my photos. You could see for miles and I spotted the Statue of Liberty in the distance.

After spending quite a bit of time atop the GE Building, we went down to the NBC Store where I got myself some Friends and 30 Rock goodies. I’ll confess, I almost bought a SNL Cowbell which had “Needs more cowbell” written on it. We then went to Macys on 34th Street. The had some nice jewellery there, and some extremely nice clothes. I wanted a pair of jeans but all I could see was designer clothing. Where were the cheap, non-designer jeans?! We were aware we had to get back to the hotel as we were going on an optional excursion: a night tour of New York. The Prime Cafe adjoins the hotel were staying in so we just ate there. Of course, I had Nachos with “ground beef”- a gross way of describing mince. The food was lovely although the portion I was served was way too big!

The evening- another tour
The NY sight seeing bus came directly to the hotel to pick up members of the group who were going on this tour (normally, you board the bus in Times Square). When we got to Times Square and started picking people up, there was a bit of an argument between the guide on the bus (no idea what he was called) and some French people who got on. Basically, the bus was full, the guide asked them to leave and they wouldn’t. Adrian came over to us and we were all like “err, what’s going on?” and making worried faces. After the troublemakers got off the bus, we drove around a good portion of New York, some of which we’d already seen in the morning.

It was a good night tour however, the highlight for me was going to Brooklyn, because we hadn’t been there in the morning and the lights on the bridge looked pretty in the dark. I ended up feeling a little cold towards the end so sat with my hood up. I’m not sure when we arrived back at the hotel- maybe around 8.30pm or 9pm? We sorted out our suitcases (for travelling to Niagara Falls the next morning), watched some tv and set the alarm for an early start in the morning.

This has to be said- I *heart* NY

Mood : bouncy   Music : On A Day Like Today  by  Bryan Adams

Where do I begin? After several months of looking forward to my holiday, the departure date finally arrived. I awoke at 5am, giving me plenty time to get ready and triple check that my mum and I had everything we needed. We arrived at Aberdeen airport, Scotland at 8am, giving us oodles of time to check-in, go through security and board the flight.

My flight to London Heathrow didn’t depart until 11.30am so it was a bit of a wait. We flew down there with British Airways who were fantastic. I was quite nervous about flying this time round because I was extremely anxious when I flew to France a couple of years ago. This time was much better although I’m still not a huge fan of the taking off and landing parts. The landing was a little bumpy- the girl sitting next to me had fallen sound asleep and was rudely awoken (I did my best not to laugh).

We arrived in London just after 1pm. The connecting flight to New York’s JFK airport didn’t depart until 6.30pm so I had yet another long wait. This time it wasn’t so bad as I was in Terminal 5 which is more like a large shopping centre than an airport. I had lunch at a restaurant called Giraffe, went to Harrods (for a pen and a carrier bag) and wandered around trying to find Krispy Kreme donuts (I never did find them).

Once our departure gate was announced, my mum and I had to get on several of the biggest escalators I have ever seen. Escalators also make me a little nervous- I fell down one as a child (now don’t laugh!). Following that, we had to go on the underground shuttle. It went *really* fast (you had to hold on tight) and it only took about 1 minute!

The flight to JFK was quite good although I don’t think my mum would agree with me- she felt extremely sick and slept most of the journey. I tried to keep myself amused by watching the inflight entertainment- Friends, Back To You and Anchorman. I managed to doze off for about 15 mins but embarrassingly jumped when I woke up and for a few seconds failed to realise I was on a plane. Ultimately, I was pretty bored by the time we landed at JFK (well it was a 7 hour flight!).

We landed about 9pm New York time (we were late in leaving Heathrow because of a queue of planes on the runway). I thought everything would be plain sailing once we had landed. How wrong was I? Firstly, there didn’t seem to be a gate available for our plane, so were stuck on it for around 30-45 minutes. Secondly, when we did eventually get into the airport, all I could see ahead of me was a massive queue of people. It turns out a flight from Asia had arrived at the same time and there was a huge queue to get through US Border Control. After spending a lot of time in the queue, it was my turn at Border Control. A couple of minutes there and we were free to go collect our luggage.

On exiting the luggage area, we went into the arrivals area where there was a large group of people waiting for folk to come off the flights. We scanned the crowd, looking for someone with a Jetsave sign. The person who greeted us was a tour director called Adrian and I’m not sure who was more glad to see who: we were relieved to finally arrive in New York and he was happy to see us because we were the last in the group to arrive and he’d been stuck at the airport for 11 hours!

We needed to be transported to our hotel which was the Holiday Inn Manhattan 6th Av, situated at 125 West 26th Street. Adrian tried to arrange a shuttle but he was told it would be a 45 minute wait so instead, he hailed a cab and within 5 minutes, we were speeding towards Manhattan (yes, riding in one of those yellow NYC taxis is quite an experience!).

The best part of the journey was heading though a tunnel then seeing the Manhattan skyline unfold in front of my eyes. It was dark but still a very special moment. It didn’t take long to reach the hotel either- maybe 40 minutes or so. As soon as we arrived, the receptionist at the hotel yelled “The Shepherds are here! The Shepherds are here!” which I found pretty funny. Turns out we were definitely the last people to arrive because of the delay in London and then the delay at JFK. By 11.30pm I was in bed- totally knackered!

Mood : accomplished   Music : Breathless  by  The Corrs