In the world of travel today, most travellers opt to explore places on their own instead of signing in on a pre-arranged guided tour even before they leave their home country. Guided tours can often be rather constrained with minimum time allocations at each sight seeing stop, with also the chances of having to visit places that may not even be of interest to you.
With a good guide book in hand, a map and tickets to the city’s hop-on hop-off bus, discovering a place can be much more fun. It also provides the freedom of sight-seeing decision…. To get off or not to get off!
The hop-on hop-off double decker bus rides can also aid in getting your bearings right while allowing you to plan out your days of exploration to come. The bright blue buses of CitySights NY offers several types of bus trips throughout the day. However, during the holiday season, the Lights of the Holiday Tour which is not a hop-on hop-off ride but instead an escorted tour, is a colourful way to admire New York City in all its Christmas splendour.
The Lights of the Holiday Tour allows you to revel in the festivities that make New York the fun capital of the world at this time of the year. Times Square, Grand Central Terminal , Macy’s, Lord & Taylor, 5th Avenue, Central Park, Bryant Park, world famous Rockefeller Christmas Tree , Radio City Music Hall, Time Warner Center, Trump Tower and St Patrick’s Cathedral are some of the sites along the tour route.
Stopping at Grand Central Terminal and exploring its insides is a lot of fun especially if you start thinking about all the movies that has been filmed there. The celestial ceiling of turquoise green and gold is a lovely sight.
Hanging in the middle of a busy street is the The UNICEF Snowflake, a beautiful sight in the midst of daily traffic rush. Displayed each holiday season as a beacon of hope, peace and compassion for vulnerable children around the world, it’s a dazzling, illuminated crystal ornament that graces the intersection of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street. Collaborating with the world’s leading crystal-maker, Baccarat, UNICEF constructed the largest outdoor chandelier that contains 16,000 crystal prisms, is 23 feet wide and over 28 feet tall, and weighs more than 3,300 pounds.
In New York and want to explore it for yourself? Try a hop-on hop-off bus for exploration freedom! Visit their official site for more information on the Lights of the Holiday Tour.
Text & Photography by Rosemarie John © All Rights Reserved
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