Last week I spent 4 days in New York City. It was surreal to be in the city that never sleeps, and I can tell you from my 4th storey hotel room that song lyric is true!

As my friend and I are both celebrating a big birthday this year, we left the kids at home and set off on an adventure. The 8 hour flight was turbulent and being stuck in my seat most of that time allowed me to watch 3 films! Luckily I’m a film junkie, and I enjoyed The Girl on the Train (review here), Inferno and Bridget Jones’s Baby.

Anyway, that’s the background to the trip, now for the photos.

The day before we arrived, New York had its first snow storm of the year. Everywhere was piled with snow.

On our first trip out we visited Central Park. I really like the Christopher Columbus statue outside.

I love the icicles and the scenes depicted below.

Central park was magical under a layer of snow.

Here’s my WordlessWednesday post of snowy pictures from Central Park.

There were plenty of quirky things to see as we walked around the city.

And this shot of Trump Towers proved popular on Instagram. There were armed body guards outside (hidden by the jeep in this picture) and NYPD across the street. There were also a couple of demonstrators with some very interesting drawings of the new president!

The best way to see New York is on one of the many open top bus tours. These are fun and hassle free, even in the minus degree temperatures we experienced. On the Downtown tour I took a few shots of Time Square.

These are best views I had of The Empire State building and the new World Trade Center on the bus. But you can hop on and off the bus tour at any stage to visit these iconic places.

Here’s the FBI headquarters…

And this was impressive too

Our bus ticket also included a free ferry trip past the Statue of Liberty, which was a must see attraction.

The view of the city from the ferry was stunning, although I had to crop the pictures as there were peoples heads in the way.

All around the city you can spot churches tucked in between the skyscrapers,

and everywhere you looked were brilliant buildings like this one.

Finally, we paid to go on the Top of the Rock at the Rockefeller Center. It had a 70th floor observation deck, although this was shut due to strong winds. The view was still magnificent from the 67th & 68th floors.

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On Wednesday I’ll share some pictures of the buildings in the Uptown New York bus tour. This had some of the most beautiful and exclusive buildings with views across Central Park.