NEW YORK: THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING.

My first time in America and the first stop on our trip of a lifetime: New York City.

Let's be clear before we get started: I'd never been to America before this trip and neither had Nicola - so we were on this journey together to be the biggest tourists you've ever witnessed. I'll be writing about all of the places we visited and breaking some places/experiences down in to multiple blog posts to focus on key experiences more clearly. New York being one of those.And first up on our touristy list? The Empire State Building.We purchased a ticket outside that was around $60 dollars for both the Empire State Building viewing and the Statue of Liberty Boat Ride for the next day, not too shabby.I don’t know how we managed it, but we avoided all of the people. We were in and up to the top within a matter of minutes with pretty much no waiting time – we’d expected to be queuing for hours to get to the top but the whole experience was over in less time than that.The Empire State Building, sits proudly in Midtown Manhattan, on Fifth Avenue just between West 33rd and 34th Street. At 1,454 feet high it’s a monster of a building but funnily enough, walking down the street you could almost miss it. The concrete jungle that is New York City makes you feel like there’s no escape but in the best possible way (apart from the oh my god I might die humidity). The buildings sit so tall you feel like an ant and the sky feels completely out of reach.And I mean, you can’t really take in just how high you’re going up in that building until you’re out there, on the platform, but when you’re travelling up 80 odd floors in a lift it feels pretty mega.

There was an audio based tour that gave you all the information you’d ever need to know about the building itself, we skipped around just listening to the bits that interested us and then made our way towards the outside. We first had to queue for our ‘let’s stand in front of the green screen and pretend we’re actually in front of the Empire State Building’ photo (like we did absolutely everywhere else we visited in America, it got to the point where we just posed like total dicks, but for this first one, we were smiley and happy and all for the fun and games).

Nicola and I could barely contain our excitement. I couldn’t stand still for all the bodily jigging I was doing and both of us had face ache from the constant smiles. We just wanted to get out there!IT WAS SO HIGH, but weirdly I didn’t feel scared. The viewing area felt incredibly safe, the fencing that surrounded us was high enough to make you feel completely at ease but was wide enough that you could put your camera through the gaps to get some undisturbed, picture perfect snaps of the insane view.And guys, the view was mental.Totally and utterly, mental.

I literally felt like I was on top of the world. And whilst it’s by no means the highest building in the world, it’s certainly the closest to the top I’ve ever felt.

New York looked magnificent.

Central Park, which felt like a city in itself beforehand, looked almost the size of a pea and the water just framed the whole city so beautifully. It was an unreal, magical, vast and totally overwhelming view. Concrete never looked so damn pretty.The joy was so very real, for both of us. We just kept looking at each other, mouthing ‘is this even our life?’.

It’s certainly an experience that shouldn’t be overlooked when visiting New York - it’s not badly priced for how incredible it makes you feel and it was the absolutely perfect way to start kick off our trip.Have you visited the Empire State Building? How did it make you feel?

P.S. I'd suggest not wearing a hat or a flowing mini-skirt when making your visit, it's windy as heck up there!