New York City is full of iconic filming locations with Home Alone 2, Godzilla, I Am Legend, Ghostbusters, Men in Black, Crocodile Dundee and more being filmed there. But for many, the most iconic filming location in New York City is the Friends apartment building.
I’m only a new addition to the Friends fan base, discovering it in the last few years while at University, but I wanted to check it out so it was the first place we visited this morning. Even though the show itself was filmed in Los Angeles, the apartment building they were supposed to live in is infamous and so it was great to see it.
We wanted to check out the Brooklyn bus tour loop, making use of our 48 hour hop-on hop-off pass, today but due to the Bike Tour that was taking place in the city today the loop was shorter than normal and starting near the Brooklyn Bridge rather than the Gray Line HQ.
The easiest way to get there was to get the subway to Wall Street and walk, so we took this opportunity to check out some sights in the financial district of the city including the New York Stock Exchange, Federal Hall – where George Washington was sworn in as President, Trinity Church and a few other things.
Brooklyn is an area that is often overlooked on short city breaks to New York, but it’s worth checking out as it has a different atmosphere to Manhattan. New York is more than just Manhattan Island and we’re going to try to visit as much of it as we can while we’re here.
Over the space of a couple of hours the Brooklyn Gray Line loop showed us the highlights of the borough including Cadman Plaza Park, Brooklyn Borough Hall, the NY Transit Museum, Grand Army Plaza, the Library, Prospect Park Zoo and more. I have to say I really liked the atmosphere in Brooklyn, so if I get a chance I’ll try to make it back here on foot.
We hadn’t originally planned to visit New Jersey while in NYC, but after hearing so much about it on the tours yesterday we decided to add it to our list. So after finishing the tour of Brooklyn we made our way to Washington Square Park to take the Path Train to Jersey City.
There wasn’t much of a plan for our visit to New Jersey but we spent a couple of hours walking around Jersey City, seeing what there was to see, and grabbing some lunch before making our way back to Manhattan to have a walk around before our planned trip to the Empire State Building.
The Empire State Building is another one of those iconic New York City locations that you can’t miss while in the city, and we decided to check it out in the evening so that we could see all of the lights of New York from above.
After getting back from Jersey City we still had a few hours to spare before visiting the Empire State Building so we did some more sightseeing, checking out filming locations across the city including the Ghostbusters Fire Station and the Rockefeller Center.
Luckily we had pre-booked our tickets as this saved us a lot of queuing and, although we still had to wait approximately 45 minutes before we were able to get in the elevators to the top. But luckily they were planned for this and during your time waiting you move from one room to another, with each room featuring photos and exhibits where you can read about the history of the building.
We spent over an hour just checking out the lights of New York, and seeing sights such at the Chrysler Building, Central Park etc from a different angle. It was great to see it from this perspective, but if I ever come back to New York I’ll do it in the day time to get a different view.
