Today we went to the Empire State Building, we went around noon and there wan't much of a queue. It costs $27/£17 and once you finally get to the Observation Deck as there are few lifts to go up its worth it as there are amazing views of the whole city including New Jersey and Brooklyn. It goes without saying that its best to visit the Empire State on a sunny or really clear day. We picked a good day.
After taking copious amounts of photos with different angles and levels we made our way back down. If you really want to go to the Empire State Observation Deck as its such an iconic part of New York then you should go but it you are not bothered or you have been to the Empire State before I would suggest going to the Rockefeller Centre Observation Deck. Its the same price, you get to see the Empire State Building and I think the observation deck is nicer. The one on the Empire State as you can see has a criss cross type of railing which is quite high (at least 7 feet) and can be seen when taking photos of people especially. Alternatively the one on the Rockefeller Centre Observation Deck is lower probably the height of your hip and glass so you can get better photos.
We decided it may be best to do a hop on hop off bus tour as there is so much to see and we only had a week in New York. There were several vendors selling tickets outside of the State Building so we approached one and asked how much the tickets were and what we got for them, the ticket was $56/£36 for 48 hours and includes a Downtown, Uptown, Night, Brooklyn, boat with Statue of Liberty and Harlem tours which is really good value. There was a bus stop across the street so we got on the next bus that was going downtown. The bus is roofless with no downstairs seats, there are earphones so you can hear the guide and other languages for tourists. The tour company we used was NY City Sights, there are about 3 or 4 tour companies all selling the same thing at the same price.
Our tour guide was ridiculous, we had this Asian woman talking to us in broken English, she told us some facts but most of what she was saying was simply her opinion. She described Starbucks as a very popular place for Americans to use wifi and mentioned nothing about coffee. At this point all we could do was laugh at how ridiculous this woman was. The downtown tour consisted of 5th Avenue, Chinatown, Broadway which has several high street stores such as Topshop, Victoria's Secret, Steve Madden etc. Wall Street, South Street Seaport, United Nations, Waldorf Astoria, Rockefeller Centre, Park Avenue, Times Square, Carniege Hall and the Theatre District. In total the tour was about 90 minutes, we decided to ride the bus the whole way to see everything and decide where we want to go later. The buses run from 8am to 6pm.
We went to Red Lobster for dinner in Times Square, its quite a big restaurant with 3 floors. We had to wait about 15 minutes for a table and I had a delicious prawn, creamy linguine and rice meal with a huge strawberry daiquiri which was way to big and didn't taste much of alcohol, I definitely wouldn't get it again, even if I had someone to share it with.
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