Some of my impressions from the trip:
Top of the Rock: The top floor of the Rockefeller building. I had this recommended to me by a colleague. The view is slightly different from the Empire State Building, but usually the queues are shorter. Also, the elevator was nicer, with a glass ceiling so you can see the elevator shaft, which is decorated with blue leds at every floor. I went with my sister at sunset, and the views of the city and Central Park were very nice.
The WTC site: Not much to see here. They're currently building a new skyscraper to replace the towers (called "Liberty Tower"), so it's interesting to see a skyscraper being born. I was more moved by a friend showing me the building she was working in on 9/11 and the diner where she was hiding out after the attack. Sure made the event seem closer, with one of my friends being caught up in it.
Circle Line: boat trip around Manhattan. A friend recommended I do the semi-circle tour instead of the full circle, as the top half wasn't all that interesting. You get to view Ellis Island, The statue of Liberty and Downtown Manhattan from the sea. There is a guy giving a running wisecracking commentary on what you see as the boat goes down the Hudson and up the East river. I found it entertaining.
Metropolitan Museum of Art: Very big museum on the eastern edge of Central Park. They had an impressive collection of arms and armor, including some stuff you don't see all that much in European museums, like Persian armor, Chinese armor and Japanese armor, masks and swords.
Museum of Natural History: Big museum. Parts of this museum seemed very familiar to me, and I had no clue why, until I remembered that this museum was featured in "A night at the museum" (Ben Stiller movie). Nice museum with lots and lots of displays. I found the marine exhibition in the cellar to be quite cheesy, though. My sister liked the dinosaurs.
JFK International Airport: A fairly messy and inefficient airport. I spent an hour and a half waiting in line at immigration, and the security checks and boarding procedures were messy.
Brooklyn Bridge: Famous bridge between Brooklyn and Manhattan. Most guidebooks recommend walking across it, so it's pretty crowded. Once I got to the Brooklyn side I walked down to the DUMBO-area, which has very good views of the bridge, and it's also a very good spot to take some photos of the downtown Manhattan skyline. For some reason half the pedestrian part of the bridge is reserved for bikers, which doesn't help the congestion.
Central Park: This was a lot bigger than I imagined. I didn't really get a feel for the scale of this park until I watched it from the top of the Rockefeller building. It has green lawns, lots and lots of trees, some lakes, a small castle and a lot of roads going through it. It was also fairly busy, especially in the weekend.
Empire State Building: The most popular of the big buildings. I hate wasting my time standing in line so I had initially decided to skip this one, but the final day the weather was very nice, and I had a couple of hours to kill before my plane left. I thought I'd try to see if I could make it up there. For some reason there were almost no lines this day, so I only spent 20 minutes or so getting up to the top. I probably saved a lot of time by running up the stairs from 80th floor to the 86th rather than wait in line for the elevator. It is really a great view from up there, possibly only beaten by going up in a helicopter. I had decided against doing the helicopter tour because my sister told me she spent almost a whole day hanging around the helipad waiting for her turn when she did it. It was fairly windy when I got up there, though, so it got chilly fast. My tip: Bring a windbreaker.
Seeing a show in the theater district: You can't really go to NYC without going to see a show at Broadway, so I felt compelled to go. In London I saw the Spamalot musical, so this time I wanted to see one of the classics. I decided to go see "The Phantom of the Opera", and it was a nice show, although I got stuck in the middle of a big group of Japanese tourists, and the guy next to me had cranked up the volume of his simultaneous translation headset to the maximum, so whenever there was a quiet scene you could hear the Japanese dialogue louder than the voices of the actors. Still, it was a good show, and a nice way to spend the evening.
In addition to all of these things I have been walking around, getting to know the city with my feet, looking at the attractions like the Flatiron Building, Times Square, Wall Street, Chinatown, Grand Central station, the UN Building, the 24 hour apple store at 5th avenue (ObGeek). I also visited a Tarawa-class marine amphibious assault ship (USS Nassau).
I spent a day going up to Boston by train. New England is famous for its fall foliage, and the trip up there was fairly spectacular. I'm not used to seeing that many bright red trees. Boston itself was OK, I walked around Boston Common and took a walk up to Beacon Hill, famous for its European-looking architecture. On the train back I made plans over the phone with my sister to go to "Amateur night" at the Apollo theater. Unfortunately, trains in the US run slowly, so I arrived late at Penn Station, with only 40 minutes to go before the show started. I jumped on the express metro up to Harlem (where the Apollo club is located) and started running in the direction where I thought the club was located. After 10 minutes I found out I had been running east instead of west. I ran like crazy westwards and finally made it to the club where my sister and her friend were waiting, although five minutes late. It must have been a funny sight, white boy running like crazy through Harlem at night (with 3000 euros worth of camera equipment in my backpack to boot...), but apart from some shouted comments from people hanging in the streets, nothing happened. The show had just started when we got in, and it was a new cultural experience for me. I was mainly about amateurs competing in singing and dancing, and who won was decided by how much the crowd would cheer. It was also possible to boo people off stage, and they had a guy called "the executioner" that would pull people off stage when the booing got loud enough, while wearing various silly costumes. It felt like being in the crowd of a Jerry Springer show or something with the crowds cheering, shouting, booing and generally being loud (although no fighting). It was god fun, and it was nice to see all the parents showing up to support their kids dancing on stage. The whole thing was finished in less than two hours.
My friend Diana was visiting some of her friends in Connecticut, and on Sunday they all came down to NYC, so we had lunch, together with another one of her friends who was living in New Jersey.
In general I was very unimpressed with rail service in the US. I found the trains slow and expensive. Considering that most people need to go outside the city center as well after arriving, I totally understand why most people use their car to get around rather than the train. A trip from, say NYC to DC seems to take an hour longer by train than by car as well. And the railway stations are crowded! Especially Penn Station! And they had this moronic system where they didn't list the track number for the train until five to ten minutes before it would leave, so lots of people were just standing around, looking at the screen, and when the track number came up, there was an avalanche of people and luggage trying to force their way through to the train. Very stressful.
Overall it was a nice vacation, I got to hang out a lot with my sister, but at the end of my trip I was bored with NYC, so I spent the last day of my trip driving around scenic back roads with a friend, looking at fall foliage.
Pictures are here(NYC) and here(Boston)
