Our first glimpse of the Manhattan skyline was from the plane as we landed at Newark airport. The most memorable part of the journey was the two and a quarter hours we waited in line for passport control! After that we took a bus and the subway and arrived at our apartment just minutes before Joanna who had made her way from La Guardia – a journey of 26 hours from Sydney … all so exciting!
We are staying at the San Fermin Apartments in Harlem, just north of Central Park and we were welcomed by Bernardo who showed us up 3 floors to our lovely two bedroom apartment complete with a kitchenette for breakfast.
Later we headed to the nearest place to eat, a tapas bar called Peque where it was warm enough to sit outside as we caught up over sangria and beer and a selection of little nibbles which hit the spot perfectly then picked up a few groceries on the way back before an early night.
There is always a history spot, so here is a little bedtime reading if you are interested.
Giovanni da Verrazano was the first European to discover New York Harbor in 1524, but it wasn’t until Henry Hudson, sailed up the Hudson River in 1609 exploring on behalf of the Dutch East India Company, that the The Dutch started the first permanent trading post in 1624. They bought the island of Manhattan from the Native Americans for goods worth 60 guilders, often said to be worth US$24 and the name Manhattan comes from Manna Hata meaning Island of the Hills. The Dutch built a town called New Amsterdam which flourished and in 1664 the English renamed it New York after the Duke of York.
Around a century of British rule was brought to an end by the War of Independence and the inauguration of George Washington as America’s first president took place in 1789. Business and trade increased in New York and immigrants followed, first Irish and German, then Italian, Chinese and East European. The city sided with the Union of the north against the Confederates of the south in the Civil War which ended in 1865 and afterwards, New York became the wealthiest and most influential city in the country, expanding to include Brooklyn, Staten Island, Queens and The Bronx as well as Manhattan.
The turn of the century saw expansion, the population reached 3 million and the first cast iron buildings heralded in a skyline of skyscrapers and the Jazz Age. Many changes followed with The Wall Street Crash, the Great Depression, WWII and postwar years of social and economic challenges followed by reduction in crime and urban regeneration. In 2001 the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center killed almost 3000 people, but in the wake of the disaster, the city remained a major financial and cultural capital with over 40 million tourists visiting the city each year.
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