Discover the best of the Big Apple on the Slice of New York Urban Trek. There is no hotel pick-up. Please go to the start point at Grand Central Terminal - Vanderbilt Hall (inside the 42nd Street and Park Ave entrance), to meet your English-speaking guide.
Begin your exploration at the Beaux Arts masterpiece of Grand Central Terminal. Built in the early 1900s, it was on the brink of demolition in the 1960s but was saved through the efforts of preservationists such as Jacqueline Kennedy.
The interior of Grand Central is an amazing sight and will transport you to a more graceful and leisured age. The Main Concourse seen here is an immense space 120 feet wide, 375 feet long and 125 feet high. See the vaulted ceiling painted like an evening sky with gilded stars and constellations, and the famous four-sided, brass clock atop the Information Booth.
After enjoying Grand Central, you will leave the Terminal and join the locals in riding the subway to Battery Park. New York City’s subway, one of the oldest and most extensive public transportation systems in the world, not only carries millions of passengers daily, its mosaics, photographs, sculpture and music performers provide a variety of colorful life.
You will then catch the Staten Island Ferry and cruise past the iconic Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, the arrival point for millions of hopeful immigrants chasing the American dream.
After returning to Manhattan by ferry, your leader will guide you through the Financial District, home of Wall Street and New York City Stock Exchange where fortunes are made and lost. This is also the former site of the World Trade Center, where you will visit Ground Zero, the poignant memorial to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
By this time you will be ready for lunch and can enjoy a New York style pizza with its thin crust, tangy tomato sauce laced with basil and oregano, topped with real mozzarella cheese. You will sample this legendary dish with locals at a neighborhood pizza shop. Drinks with your pizza lunch are payable direct.
After your pizza stop, finish the tour passing the gothic Woolworth Tower and ending in front of the New York City hall.