New York City Vacation

I have never been to New York but it's very high on my list of places I want to go. There's a number of reasons why I want a New York vacation. A big reason is that I grew up watching movies on TV from the 1940s and 1950s. A lot of them are set in New York, and being raised in an industrial city in the North of England, it all seemed very glamorous. I loved the romantic comedies, the film noir and the gangster films. I loved the snappy dialogue and the witty one liners. New Yorkers have a way of talking that intrigues me.

Another reason is simply the buildings. I would walk round the city with a sore neck just looking up at them all. I think New York has some of the finest buildings in the whole world and I hope the residents are proud of them. I found out that there are several New York restaurants and bars with spectacular views of the city. I would definitely go there. A New York vacation would have to include the Empire State Building and the fabulous Art Deco Chrysler Building. My favorite is the Flatiron Building. It looks like it shouldn't be upright at all, it's not surprising that it's the most photographed building in the world. That beats the Taj Mahal.

It's not often a train station would be on my wish list, but I would like to see the Grand Central Station. It looks like a huge cavern on television. I've seen a lot of movies where characters meet under that big clock. A New York vacation would also have to take in the Brooklyn Bridge and St. Patrick's Cathedral, the largest Cathedral in the US.

It would be great to sail into the city instead of flying in. The first thing I'd see would be the Statue of Liberty, like so many immigrants to the US over the years, clutching their meager possessions and full of hope for the future. She must have been a welcoming site. It seems incredible that another iconic landmark is no longer there. Of course, the Twin Towers were another New York vacation destination, and I'm glad there are plans to construct a garden of remembrance on the site.

It would be nice to simply wander around the places that feel familiar, because I've seen them on the screen or read about them for so long. Places like Times Square and Greenwich Village. I'm interested in the Village where so many singer songwriters, including Bob Dylan, made their name. It would be nice to go on a New York vacation in a time machine and be transported back to the Village of the 1960s or the Manhattan of the 1950s.

The highlight for me, as an ardent Beatles and John Lennon fan, would be to go into Central Park and visit the Strawberry Fields memorial, where fans gather from around the world. I would be constantly aware on my New York vacation that this is the city where John was tragically killed, but it was also the city he loved.