Letters to a friend...: One day in New York

A few years back we visited Philadelphia. It was a short one week trip in mid April and we had a really good time exploring this city. Before the trip we spent hours planning it so we wouldn't miss anything and at some point we found something interesting. First we realized that Philadelphia is just a couple of hours from New York. And the second we dug out we could get there incredibly cheap - just $18 round trip. We couldn't resist seeing the Big Apple and we bought bus tickets once we got to Philadelphia and were waiting for the following Sunday to see the city we landed in almost decade before (but had no chance even to glance at). When Sunday came, we boarded Yo Bus in Chinatown (in Philadelphia) and were excited to see the most famous city in the World.

Two hours later we were unloaded at the end of Manhattan, in Chinatown of New York. What else would you expect? Yo Bus brings you from one Chinatown to another after all ;)

It was a breezy morning with some chill air blowing from the Hudson and we immediately started to look for the subway station. Actually we almost missed one because we were mostly looking up at the colorful houses decorated with hieroglyphs :-). But finally we found it and 20 minutes later we surfaced in the middle of Manhattan, near 42nd St and Bryant Park.

Wow! There were a lot of skyscrapers around us and only a small green island of the park in between.

We needed to take a breath and calm ourselves down so we stayed here for a while, getting a cup of coffee and a fresh croissant we found in the street cafe.

By the way, you can see how this park looks like in this short video we took when we waited for the coffee:

A few minutes later we were ready to start exploring the New York streets and entered our one day marathon.

First we passed Grand Central Terminal and the old The Bowery Saving Bank building with a nice Cipriany restaurant on the first floor.

Next we found ourselves staring up at the Chrysler building. One of the iconic New York skyscrapers that was built in 1930 and for a long 10 months was the tallest building in the city until the Empire State Building was erected and stole this title. 1046 feet tall and still one of the tallest in New York.

We spent some time around there and moved further, whistling "New York, New York" tune and staring around. We still couldn't believe it - we were in New York, the city we knew so well from novels and movies. But that was an exciting thing - we were there and enjoying every moment of this adventure!