empire state building & hss intrepid

us on top of the empire state building

the view looking north towards central park

the famous empire state building

the flatiron building

concorde at the hss intrepid museum

the (former) hss intrepid

Tuesday 19th May
Today we went to the Empire State Building. We had heard that there could be a wait of up to three hours to get to the top of the building. Got across there at about 9.00 am cause it only 500 metres from the motel. Almost no line up, by the time we got the tickets we were ushered through to the lifts and in no time we were at the top. The view was awesome, almost 15 miles visibility in all directions. Could see all the way to Central Park to the north and all the way to the Statue of Liberty from the south. It was such a good vantage point and we spent about 1 hour at the top taking photos and just looking over NY and surrounds. Came down from the building and got some lunch at Quiznos subs. For the afternoon we went to visit the HSS Intrepid Sea Air and Space Museum. The Intrepid is an old air craft carrier which has bee converted into the museum. There are planes on display on the upper deck and some on the inside of the ship too. The whole ship had been renovated and re-opened in November 2008. Also there was a British Airways Concorde on display. We ended up spending the afternoon there and it was very informative and we enjoyed it. Later in the evening went for a walk a little south of the motel on Fifth Ave and Broadway and walked to the Flatiron Building. It is a building that is built on the corner block where three roads meet and its a very skinny triangular shape. In front of the Flatiron is Madison Square Park which is really nice and lots of people go there to just sit about, lay on the grass and drink coffee and eat food. Took a few pictures of a Squirrel sitting on one of the seats, there were squirrels everywhere all of which very cute.