New York City makes almost as many appearances on lists naming the best places to ring in the new year as the Kardashians do on Instagram. Famous for the ball drop in Times Square, first brought to my attention by the classic Friends episode ‘The one with the routine’, NYE in NYC was always on my bucket list as something to experience at least once.
The perfect opportunity to do so arose at the end of 2012, when I planned to visit NYC en route to settling in London for a couple of years. I was lucky enough to have friends in Baltimore and Philadelphia, who were easy to convince and thus a long-pondered bucket-list item fast became a reality.
One of our first lessons was how far in advance others plan such a trip. As I travel fairly frequently, I often throw trips together much more last minute than others might, and so when we were searching for accommodation in October it quickly became evident there was barely anything left on the island of Manhattan. Instead, we settled for a budget hotel on Staten Island, which was far less of an inconvenience than I anticipated.
After accommodation considerations came the question of tickets: many restaurants, bars and even the most run-of-the-mill fast food chains make the most of their position in Times Square by selling rather pricey packages that include an all-night party with a prime view of the festivities and midnight celebration. These are certainly appealing, but it depends how much you want to invest in your evening, and as I was on the move I was travelling on a budget, so we decided to wing it – and I couldn’t be happier with that decision.
We headed into Manhattan on the free Staten Island Ferry, and spent something of a touristy day visiting Rockefeller Centre, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Central Park and the NBC store where I made the regretful decision not to purchase a giant Friends coffee mug. We had all been to NYC before so it was an enjoyable day of aimless wandering, stopping in diners to feast on burgers and chocolate milkshakes.
We walked through Times Square around 12pm, and there was already a decent crowd clustered behind the temporary fences set up for the evening’s festivities. While there is a show before midnight, it would not begin for several hours, and as it was something like minus six degrees Celsius I felt that those people had a fairly unenjoyable wait ahead of them. We had passed through with the idea of assessing the situation and making a decision, but the size of the crowd already and the hours ahead immediately helped us decide that was not how we wanted to pass the day.
As evening fell and our extremities could no longer fight the cold despite layers, we stepped into a bar for some drinks – where I was treated rather rudely by a waitress who seemed to have never encountered a foreign person before. She was rewarded for her effort with my American friends deciding she earned a tip of only 10%, after which we hastily exited the building to find we had magically found ourselves inside a new cordoned-off zone set up by the police while I was being treated like an alien for requesting tea.
The streets were almost empty as everyone was either in Times Square ready for the show to start or outside the zone. It was worth a shot to see if we could convince a policeman to let us into Times Square, as the show was about to start. We had an enjoyable back and forth with this typically New York cop, who told us about how thousands of police from outside NYC proper were brought in for the event. He also informed us we really weren’t missing anything by not being in Times Square and suggested we simply try to glimpse the ball at midnight from one of the side streets.
And so, we wandered the streets some more, as I marvelled at the number of police, the car-less avenues and purchased some very fashionable ‘2013’ glasses requisite for bringing in the new year. We stopped at a TGI Fridays for a truly awful meal right near Central Park, where runners were eating pasta ‘carb loading’ for the Midnight Run that takes place each NYE in the park.
As the clock ticked toward midnight we made our way back toward Times Square, and though we found a spot on a side street the famous ball is quite masterfully positioned so it is almost impossible to see from anywhere but the designated crowd corral. Still, we could hear the countdown and joined with the many on the street shouting in the new year.
It was a long but enjoyable walk back to the Ferry terminal, and my experiences on this night ended up serving as inspiration for every New Year I have had since. My now-favourite activity is simply to walk around and see what’s going on, as I’ve since done in London, Cesky Krumlov and San Francisco.
We waited a short while for the ferry and soon I was enjoying an incredible view of the iconic NYC skyline at night – which was well worth the extra travel time to reach the soft bed that waited for me.
Courtney Gahan is a serial expat, traveller and freelance writer who has bartered with Moroccan marketeers, seen the sun rise at Angkor Wat and elbowed her way through crowds on NYE in NYC
