An Unforgettable Experience – New York for New Year

Yes its true – A Wandering Memory is returning to the Big Apple before Christmas… It got me thinking about our last December experience in the city that never sleeps… News Years Eve 2010.

There are few more iconic cities to spend New Years Eve in than New York.

When researching it for 2010, I came across the ‘Times Square – All Access Pass’ which I did a huge amount of research on before committing to… The event itself was well organised, about a week before New Year’s Eve the company set up a collection booth in a local New York hotel for people to come in and exchange their tickets for the passes.

Now these passes let us have unlimited drinks through the evening, and visit a host of different locations. They also got us through the barricades that litter Times Square over New Years Eve – the NYPD although on high alert let us through once we showed the passes we had. What we didn’t realise is that few of the locations were actually in Times Square itself; they are more around the edges and within the general area.

We started our experience at 8pm, knowing that with an All you can drink pass this could get a little messy by midnight! Well did we have some fun in those first few bars… drinks flowing like nothing you’ve ever seen… everyone was joyas and relaxed…

We had a wicked time – we got through 4 of the bars before it came too close to midnight for us to move.

The Bryant Street Grill was the hardest to get to as you need to use the Subway to get there (only 1 block) as our route took us straight through Times Square Centre which is impassable. The NYPD to their credit were very helpful, even with all the stress of having thousands of people to deal with. We ended up in Ruby Tuesdays at around 11pm, from here we could pop outside and see the ball drop from an angle and celebrate with all the people outside (a real NY experience). We already knew we couldn’t join all the people in the streets that had been there for hours waiting… but hey this was a good alternative…

We watched the New Year land with a bottle of Champagne and some new friends we met. What could be better???

Big cities like this are always an attraction on New Year’s Eve and honestly we were not let down by this event, but in hindsight it would have been easier to book just a single venue. But not being a New Yorker – we never know what bars have good views and which don’t! Booking is like a lottery in itself!

Walking through Times Square at 1am on route back to our hostel, it just seemed incredible that hundreds of thousands of people had just packed this square out… It was now empty, and felt a little eerie…

What a memorable experience for a group of friends not so familiar with the city of New York – A great Wandering Memory.

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