I was lucky enough to visit in the early 80's for a weekend. We stayed at the Taft Hotel, one of the modestly priced Hotels at the time. It is now mostly residential and includes a five star Hotel call The Michelangelo. The Taft Hotel was used in the film 'The Graduate' in which the leading couple had a rendezvous. Funnily enough, the movie made famous another of Simon & Farfunkel's 'Mrs Robinson'.
I was awestruck by the City, it was really overwhelming. I'll never forget talking to a young lady on a train about New York and expressing how lucky she was to live there. She said it was awful and once you moved to New York it was impossible to leave, at least that was her experience.
I finally appreciated what a 'concrete jungle' was. As far as your eye could see there were buildings, tall buildings only restricted by the water and Central Park.
We had a young couple from Bethel show us around which my father had organized as we knew the Sister who had been in our Congregation in Australia for a number of years before she moved, with her family to America.
The Bethel couple suggested we choose between going to the Twin Towers or the Empire State Building as they were expensive to tour. It was a very hard choice as I really wanted to go up the iconic Empire State Building. We decided on the Twin Towers and because we were on a very tight budget, we kept the tickets and tour pamphlet as souvenirs. Last year they were selling for around $80 USD which makes for a good souvenir, who would have guessed.
My husband and I travelled to London about five years ago and I consider them to be two very different cities. London/England has so much history that New York doesn't have and of course, will never have. One thing that surprised me when I visited London was the appreciation for its rich history and distinct lack of commercialisation. They aren't in the habit of pulling down old buildings and plastering advertisements everywhere you turn. Although we never travelled into the business district.