Our first visit to New York came at the end of the New England tour in 2008. With a then teenage daughter with us, some time was spent in the retail areas of 5th Avenue but we did manage to get a fair few sights in as well. At the time of this visit, the 9-11 memorial was probably the world's largest building site & you can see some examples in this collection. We were taken aback with it then and vowed to return to see it once completed. It took us a further 10 years but was well worth the wait!
When planning the trip, a number of friends gave us the benefit of their experiences & one of those was to time our "tower" visits to late afternoon (we were there at the end of October) so that we could see Manhattan by day and by night. As you'll see, some stunning views of both Manhattan lighting up and also sunset over New Jersey. Great piece of advice & I'm glad we followed it.
On our visit to the Rockefeller Centre, we saw the tribute to the steeplejacks who'd built these sky-scrapers in the early 20th century. I was so taken with their working conditions, compared to the Health & Safety Environment in which we now all exist, that I thought I 'd create a tribute to those guys by giving some of my shots showing steelwork, an aged treatment.
On this visit, we only saw Grand Central Station from the inside - impressive enough but on our return, I was keen to complete the picture by seeing from the outside too.
The contrast between the green space of Central Park and the Upper West Side was staggering - to have such a great space in the centre of a city such as this was truly brilliant and at that time, it even had it's own police precinct!
Time Square also left its mark - there'll certainly always be a demand for the electricity industry whilst the Square exists.
On our final day, we took a walk down to Washington Square towards the tip of Manhattan & I was taken by how differently this felt - a much more European flavour.