After a four hour train journey from Boston, we made it to NYC! Our first day was quite uneventful. By the time we got in to Penn Station, travelled across town to find our Airbnb, find some dinner – it was quite late and time to hit the hay ahead of a busy few days, and an early start the next day.

With so much to do in our few days in the Big Apple (we only got through a fraction of the massive list we made), we were doing our best to squeeze in as much as we could. On Friday we were up and out the door at 6:30am, making our way towards The Battery at the southern tip of Manhattan Island to pick up our tickets for Liberty and Ellis Islands. It was a wonderful sight as we motored across Upper Bay, seeing the Statue of Liberty get closer, and with hundreds of other tourists piling to the side of the boat (including us) to get photos and selfies with Lady Liberty. After spending an hour on the island, learning about its history and getting a few more photos, it was time to board our boat again and head to Ellis Island, where millions of immigrants to the US would be checked, processed and (hopefully) allowed to enter the US. The centre, which was closed in the 1950s, had since been converted into a museum, highlighting the island’s history and the stories of the immigrants and communities who came to the States for the hope of a better life.

We hopped back across to Manhattan for the second major stop of the day – the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. This was the first major memorial we had been to that commemorated an event we had seen in our lifetime. On that day in 2001, our ears were tuned into the radio as the news rolled in, and our eyes glued to the screen as those images of the planes flying into the towers, and their subsequent collapse, shocked the world. Where the towers stood were now two giant holes in the ground, each surrounded by a giant square waterfall with the names of the victims surrounding them – some with a white rose placed to mark their birthday. It was truly a moving experience.

We made our way down the escalator to the museum underground. Our flatmates who had been to NYC recently had highly rated it and said we would need at least three hours there. In fact, three hours wasn’t long enough! As you walk through, you hear and see the stories of that day and its aftermath. There’s video of the moment the planes crashed into each tower, interviews with rescue workers, clips of the news reports from the day, bits of twisted metal from what remained of the tower. Every aspect of that day is covered, even to a room which comes with a warning where video shows how some people decided to take their chances and jump. And then you walk into a room which has photos of each of the nearly 3,000 victims, with all the names being read out. It really gives you an even greater perspective of how big September 11 was.

As we were trying to fit in as much as we could into our first day, we left the 9/11 museum early and crossed town to go to The Met. Friday was a late night opening – another opportunity to squeeze an extra activity in! Personally (and this may be a controversial view) I find art galleries… okay. A lot of them have the same types of art, the same artists as the rest, and after a while you find yourself wondering if you’ve seen it all before, and there’s only so much Greek sculpture I can take. Coming from London where there is a plethora of art and museums, it’s not as much of a novelty as it was when we were in the far-flung corner of the world. While I felt a bit of the same about The Met, it was an amazing building with a wide varying collection. As we only had a few hours until closing, it was a rushed stroll around to see as much as we could (we very quickly skipped past the Greek sculpture area), and it was a nice surprise to see a slice of home with some Maori sculpture and artefacts there.

Next thing you know, it was 9pm - time to find some dinner (classic New York pizza in the end) and head back to our place in BedStuy (Bedford–Stuyvesant), Brooklyn to get some rest before out next busy day.

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