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New York – lower Manhattan

New York was on our bucket list for a very long time. Karolina was actually thinking about moving there! We were very excited to finally visit ‘The city that never sleeps’ and experience some adventures in New York.

It was in 2013, so we didn’t have enough money to actually stay in New York. We chose a cheaper place which is the neighboring Newark. It was great though. We were taking a 30 minutes train ride to NYC every day to see all the important places. Hopefully, next time we will be visiting the Big Apple, we will have enough money to book a hotel on Manhattan and arrange New York airport transfer to get us there.

Top tourist attractions in New York

  1. Ellis island.

It is located right next to the Statue of Liberty and has one of the best museums we have ever seen. Ellis Island is the place where ships from all over the world arrived, until the twenties of the twentieth century. All immigrants had undergo a medical examination and tests there to decide whether they may enter into the United States. Americans have created an online database of all books of immigrants (there were 100 million of them).

Anyone coming to the island can browse and search for their ancestors. or family members who once came to the United States. You can find information such as: name, marital status, where in the U.S. a person is going, the date of arrival and the name of the ship.

Unfortunately there aren’t many emigrants in our families but we’ve managed to find some familiar surnames there.

2. Battery Park

A park stretching along the Manhattan and the Hudson River. Great place to walk and relax on a bench in the shadow. Visitors can also see a lot of runners in there. Some of them are jogging and pushing ahead strollers with the babies! Amazing and very inspiring :). For sport there is absolutely no obstacles.

3. Irish Hunger Memorial

A monument dedicated to the memory of the Irish who died of starvation. It is shown in many films such as’ P. S. I love you ‘.

4. Museum of Finance

Americans build museums in a very affordable way. In this particular museum we found many informative historical information. At the end of the tour we found instructions how to start investing step by step. Warren Buffet was presented-  what philosophy he uses at what he does. Admission was free for students, normal ticket costs $8.

5. New York Stock Exchange

NYSE’s main building can be seen only from the outside, but it’s still impressive. People working there turn billions of dollars everyday.

6. Church at Wall Street – Trinity Church.

We were very surprised at the Mass in this church. The whole mass was led by woman-priest and we did not know what to think about it. Everything she said was wise and the sermon was positive. Still, it was shocking for us because in Poland woman can’t be priest.

After Mass, we came to a black priest who stood at the exit to ask what was going on. He said it was normal and this woman is a priest in the church. We couldn’t talk with him any longer because he was very drunk – which made us even more shocked. Seriously, after leaving the church we felt stunned.

7. Wall Street Bull

The symbol of New York Stock Exchange. If someone is looking for this at the NYSE, he may well overlap – just like us. You can find it on Broadway Street, around 500m from Trinity Church.
It turns out that the place close to the bull is not as empty as on the pictures on internet … You need to cram through the crowd of tourists, who wanted to touch his bottom, because it supposedly guarantees financial success.

8. Times Square

No wonder why this place is called “crossroads of the world”.  Pictures probably will not describe, but when you look up, you do not see the tops of buildings, and it seems as if they sprang from the earth to heaven. In addition, cultural mix, which scrolls in there, is amazing. We also saw there for the first time the commercial of  “Sobieski” (Polish) vodka on the city bus.

In general, NYC did not impress us. Scyscrapers, crowds of people and no nature is not the place for us. We felt much better on the beach on Thailand :).

Check out also Things you Must see in New York.

If your time in NYC is limited, check out this post 36 Hours in New York City on the cheap! You will find there great tips for inexpensive sightseeing of NYC.

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We are Karolina, Patryk, and Mia, the lazy traveling family. After spending 5 years as digital nomads, and living in many countries in the world, we decided to make Poland our base.

Our mission is to show you safe and interesting destinations where you can travel with your family.

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