New York

One of my favorite vacations ever is when I stayed in Connecticut for a week. One of the cool things about it is that we drove in to New York while we were there. I had never been to New York prior to that visit and really was looking forward to it.

Our friends had a house on Long Island Sound and they were pretty familiar with the area. It was pretty cool because my friend’s father drove us into the city and first took us on a driving tour. Mind you, this was back in the mid-eighties so a lot of the city had not been cleaned up like it is now. There are so many things to do in New York, especially now.

One of the first places we drove through was Harlem. It was filthy. I think that it must have been just prior to having a bunch of development done as there were just blocks and blocks of abandoned buildings that looked like they were getting ready to be torn down.

We drove on to a parking garage and went on foot after that. We rode the subway for a while. It was pretty cool but almost surreal. Very old train cars, lights blinking on and off and they smelled like urine. From what I understand things have been cleaned up quite a bit.

After that we went and saw Times Square and toured Greenwich Village and then made our way to Central Park where me wandered for a while. We finished up the day meeting his mother at the Plaza Hotel. We had supper at Trader Vic’s. It was great! Everything was strange and new and this had to be one of my favorite vacations ever.

One of the things about the tour through the city that I remembered is that we got a very personalized tour. Trusted Tours and Attractions also has personalized sightseeing tours in some of the best places you can imagine such as the Miami Seaquarium, places in Atlanta, Boston and 23 other cities in the United States.

They also have an eNewsletter that you can sign up for as well. If you are planning a vacation you can get some pretty good ideas of places to go. Not only that but Trusted Tours and Attractions is giving away a free Handheld GPS unit in a drawing. You have to sign up for the newsletter in order to be entered into the contest, so head on over there.