New York - Empire State Building & Times Square

Empire State Building
It was a good thing we were becoming veterans of standing in a queue as the queue standing reached its pinnacle at the Empire State Building. Annoyingly, we even had to queue to have our photo taken in front of blue screen so they could try and sell us an overpriced digital fake later on.

The viewing platform is on the 86th floor. It takes 64 seconds to reach there in a lift and your ears pop as you go up. We went on a pretty grey day where the visibility wasn’t that great but it was still worth a visit. It was a great way to get a good overview of the layout of the city. In the 30s the Empire State Building was the tallest in the world and now it ranks 8th.

Times Square
The craziness and mayhem that is New York is best summed up on Times Square. The noise is constant. A background baseline hum of chatter in 200 different accents and languages overlaid with the chants of street vendors. Cars honking and siren squealing past every 5 minutes provide the accents to the orchestra of Times Square.
The smell is ever-changing but constant, depending on the cuisine of the nearest vendor. It could be the burnt salt and smoke of a pretzel stand or the spiced shish kebab of a halaal stand. You are forced to walk in such proximity to people that this adds another dimension to the smells of Times Square. If you are lucky, you will get whiffs of the latest Ralph Lauren or Calvin Klein perfume but being there in hot, muggy weather meant the odours were more along the lines of ‘eau de B.O’. Walking along the shop fronts provided some relief to the mugginess as chilly air conditioned air would spill out every time someone opened a shop door. Visually, Times Square is up there with Vegas. There are so many flashing billboards and coloured neon lights commanding your attention that your eyes dart around madly, trying to take it all in. But your focus is needed simply for walking- weaving in and out of crowds and trying to find a gap in the pedestrian traffic to dart into a shop. In popular hot spots where people gathered to watch an artist create a spray painted landscape of the Manhattan Skyline or scrambled over $5 designer sunglasses, you would have to forgo the footpath and walk on the road. Union Square offered some landmark shops. There was the world’s largest shop (Macy’s) and a 3 Storey ‘Toys R Us’ which even had a giant Ferris wheel in it.