USA Road Trip: Day 14 - Philadelphia to New York City

A leisurely start this morning, checked out of our B&B and back on the road. All was fine with the car when we collected it - hopefully our deposit is intact.

Heading to New York City today where we’ll be spending the rest of our holiday.

Enjoyable drive to New York in the sunshine stopping off in New Jersey on the way.

Futuro House virtual

We checked in at our hotel and luckily the hire car drop-off place was only just around the block.

It was quite nice to be free of the car for the rest of the holiday. This week we will be relying on walking, subway and bike hire to get around.

NYC car park - yes a car park!

No rest for the wicked, tonight we are booked to visit the Empire State Building – we wanted to do both the Empire State and observation deck at the Rockefeller Center (Top of the Rock) but were advised to do the Empire State Building at night and Top of the Rock during the day to get the best of both views. The reason being is that Central Park isn't lit at night and you get the best view of that from The Rockefeller Centre.

We had prebooked so no queuing and once in the elevator after a matter of seconds we were on the 86th floor of this amazing skyscraper. The views were just amazing!

Here are a few fun facts about the ESB:

The building has 103 floors and at roof height is 1250 ft (381 m) tall. The height including the antenna spire is 1454 ft (443.2 m).
It took just 410 days for the Empire State Building to be constructed and 3,400 workers (sadly 5 workers died during the construction).
For 41 years between 1931 and 1972 the Empire State Building was the tallest building in the world.
There are 73 elevators in the building.
The Empire State Building has a lightning rod near the top which is struck by lightning around 23 times every year.