Our Last Day in America! 17/12/10

Our last day in New York boohoo!!!

The first thing we did was go down to Times Sq where we had 5 minutes of fame. We appeared on the huge screen in the middle of Times of Square!! Here’s proof:

Look, it’s us in Times Sq!!

Cheesy but true! Since we bought some clothes from the store that owns this screen we got a free picture taken and put up for everyone to see. The shop assistant was a bit dopey and wasn’t clear on the message that we were allowed to include with the picture. In the end it just said ‘Happy Christmas’ but we wanted to promote the blog, say hi to everyone back at home etc etc but we were limited to a certain amount of characters.

It was a beautiful day and none better than for going to the Empire State Building and visiting the observation deck on the 86th floor.

On the way there we visited Grand Central Station and the Christmas fayre that they had on. The station is a very grand old building buzzing with activity. We also saw many American soldiers in uniform that had come back for the holidays.

Walking along the streets and avenues at Christmas you’ll often hear some bells jingling and often some happy people singing festive songs and even some doing a dance or a jig. These are the Salvation Army collecting money for charity. We took this picture for Beth as it reminded us of Phoebe in Friends:

These Salvation Army guys are everywhere ringing their Christmas bells.

Built in 1931 and standing at 1,250 ft (381 meters) tall, the Empire State Building is the tallest building in New York (it was the World Trade Center towers previous to 2001).

When you enter the building you are first met with a very grand old reception entrance with art deco stylings. Then the queues start…

The reception at the Empire State Building.

Once you get your tickets, go past the people selling you things, go up the lift that makes your ears pop and get to the top, you arrive at the 86th floor observation deck.
It allows you to walk around and get a complete 360 degree view of the city from very high up!

Being so high up it got very cold but the views were stunning!!

Us at the top.

View towards the Bronx with the Chrysler building in the foreground.

The Statue of Liberty in the distance.

The taxis, cars and people look like miniature models.

The view down town towards the financial district.

The Empire building’s shadow on the city.

After the Empire State Building, we headed back to the hotel where we caught a yellow taxi to JFK international airport. We had great views of the city in the sunset as we drove over the bridges out of Manhattan. A great end to our time in this super cool city!

We’ll miss you New York!!

At the airport we soon got on our Virgin flight home. We were sitting in Premium Economy, which was very nice. It’s the level between upper and normal economy and meant you had wider more comfy seats, a bigger entertainment screen and a great food and drinks service with proper metal cutlery and everything!

Our Virgin flight premium economy seats were very comfy!

A short 6 hours later we were back in Heathrow. Awaiting us were heave snow storms and our flight happened to be one of the last to land.

The snow was hammering down and Heathrow was covered in white snow.

We waited a few hours for Heidi’s Mum n Dad to pick us up since they were stuck in heavy traffic on the M25 due to the chaos the snow was causing on the roads.

Whilst waiting at the airport more and more of the flights were becing delayed, cancelled or diverted. Some were even having to go to Paris. We were quite lucky to have landed especially as some airports were now completely shut!

We arrived safely home and so comes to an end the first part of our adventure. Part two starts on 1st of January when we head to South Africa. Until then…HAPPY CHRISTMAS!! And…

Thanks for sharing the blog with us and HAPPY HOLIDAYS.