I visited New York City in February of 2007, and this has to be one of my favourite cities in the world….Six of us travelled over from Shannon Airport…a bit of a longer drive from Wexford but very worth it. We parked outside the airport and walked into the terminal…no shuttle busses, no queues, no hassle…..

We arrived in New York early in the afternoon and made our way to Manhattan…we stayed at The Radio City Apartments for 5 nights. These apartments are so central, there is a metro stop just outside and around the corner you are into Broadway. The apartments were spotless. Myself and my husband had a one bedroom apartment, so we had a living area/kitchen area and also a bedroom so loads of room for all those bags of shopping. The apartments were cleaned every day, I could not fault them and I would recommend them to anyone that travels to New York.

As it was February the weather was very cold….this could be an understatement as at some points I thought that my hands and legs may fall off…I could have done with my thermal underwear….we had wind chills of -27….This did not dampen our spirits in the least…having not travelled to New York before I was very excited about seeing all of the sights. While in New York we visited the Empire State Building…there were quite a lot of queues on the way up and you will find yourself waiting around quite a bit….but we went to the top at night time so we got to see the fantastic lights of New York…it was definitely worth the queuin. One of my highlights was a horse and carriage ride around central park…it took about an hour and our driver made sure that we were well tucked up underneath a very cosy rug…so the cold did not bother us at all…

You cannot visit New York and not make a trip to Ground Zero…it was eerie to see the photos that are up around the area….these photos give you an idea of what happened from minute to minute on Sep 11th…it definitely would bring more than a tear to your eye when you are there…

We could have seen lots more in New York when we were there but one thing seemed to take over…..how can you visit New York and not pop into the odd shop….well this has to be my main highlight of the trip…we spent most of the days shopping. We visited Woodbury Common….spent the whole day there and to be honest I could have gone back the next day and spent that day there too….oh my god I have never seen so many bargains in my life and not just your run of the mill clothes but all the top designers. If you are into Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger to name a few then you will be in absolute paradise…Macey’s and Bloomingdales are two of the top department stores in New York and when you go into either store and bring your passport and go to the customer service desk you will get a further 11 % off all of your purchases. We visited all of these stores and picked the most amazing bargains….we arrived home with our cases full of new handbags, shoes, boots, runners, jeans, jumpers...the list is endless..

We organised an Limo to bring us back to JFK Airport…as I said there were six of us so when we broke it down it only cost about 20 dollars a head…it was a glamorous end to our trip to New York.

I would go to New York again in a heartbeat, it has such a great buzz, the sights are great, the food is great and most of all the shopping is the best I have ever seen…