Due to the countless movies playing in New York City and including the Empire State Building, it is (next to the Times Square) probably the main tourist attraction of Manhattan. Therefore we got up really early to already get there before 9 am. And it was worth it! We already bought our tickets online and printed them out in the hotel and by that were able to avoid ANY queue. While there is an average waiting time of 1.5 till 2 hours, we managed to get to the top floor in less than 10 minutes and only had to stop for the security check.

The Empire State Building was built in 1931 and the highest building in the world for the next about 23 years, while again the highest in New York City after 9/11 and before the construction of the the new One World Trade Center. The Empire State Building offers 2 observatories on the floors 86 and 102, while we decided to only visit the famous outdoor platform on the 86th floor. Located in approximately 320 meters (which is only about 15 m higher then the observatory in Chicago’s John Hancock Tower), visitors get a to see almost all regions of Manhattan. We did not have the best weather, however due to the lack of tourists, it was totally worth it. When we went back down, the Tourist were already waiting in lines and the weather did not clear up for the full day.

As we were already very close to other tourist destinations, we decided to walk along the 5th avenue, passing the New Public Library, to get to the Grand Central Terminal. The Terminal was built in 1913, however, before that, the location was used for the Grand Central Depot (1871), followed by the Grand Central Station (1900, which is why many call it Grand Central Station nowadays). From there we took the shuttle to the Times Square were we finally were able to get something to eat (after we had no breakfast to be at the Empire State Building fast enough). Once more we manged to get to a tourist magnet without any queue, as we arrived at the Hard Rock Café perfectly in time for the opening.

Literally stuffed due to the large amount of food they served at the Hard Rock Café, we headed back to our hotel to get some more sleep.

For our evening tour, we decided to take a look at Brooklyn, while we mainly concerned Dumbo because of the fast connections with the public transport. Unfortunately we did not manage to get a table at the restaurant we actually wanted as there were long queues (about 30 minutes to 1 hour) in front of every single restaurant at the main street and we did not want to destroy our “no line” strategy of the day. Nevertheless, we were able to enjoy the beautiful scenery and the views onto the skyline of Manhattan and found a small Pizza place with surprisingly good Pizzas.