The Manhattan Jungle

There really is nowhere quite like Manhattan in New York. I first visited the city in 2011 for two weeks as part of a longer journey around America. People questioned why I would spend so much of the trip in New York but I managed to find plenty to do, whether it be frantically searching for somewhere to stay when I casually assumed I could just rock up at a hostel and they’d have a room, which wasn’t always the case, or wandering around down town at 2am on a spontaneous ramble with fellow hostellers after a game of pool. You can tick of so much and still unearth plenty. Every corner has history attached to it. Whether it be Ali v Frazier at Madison Square gardens or Babe Ruth smashing a home run at Yankee Stadium.

The city really doesn’t sleep and encompasses so many aspects of so many places that creating a glorious free-for-all. It was during a week staying in China town that I truly fell in love with the city and found myself ambling around the various districts of the city, the Bronx, Greenwich, and Little Italy doing the one thing that no one likes to admit to, people watching. In which other city would you find a police officer relaxing against his vehicle holding a slushy drink?

No individual can be put in a box and the same is of New York. You can enjoy the rush of down town Manhattan before sauntering over the Williamsburg Bridge to relax watching the sun go down over the adrenaline filled streets you’ve just left. Whether it be stepping off at Yankee Stadium and see the iconic gate numbers, exploring the vastness that is central park, strolling through China town at night being surrounded by a wall of frantic noise, or taking the ferry to Staten Island and imagining how people would have felt seeing the great concrete jungle before them, New York is a city of inspiration and grid marked chaos. The traditional yellow cabs may have been replaced with SUV style hybrids but New York still retains the bustle and the uniqueness that makes it such a lure for so many people.