मी फिरीस्ता: Empire State Building

Empire State Building - the New York’s Tallest building till 1972. Its 102-story skyscraper located in Midtown Manhattan, at the intersection of 5th Avenue and 34^th street. This building has observation deck on 86^th and 102th floor from where you can see the entire Manhattan. You can visit during day time as well as during night. You have to purchase ticket to go on observation deck; you can also purchase combo ticket which will have day view as well as night view. If you purchase the ticket online they you can skip the line and can go directly to elevator, you can also buy express ticket, I don’t know what it does but its express means less line I guess.

I will also suggest either you buy the ticket online or buy from official window of Empire state, avoid the ticket agents which are standing outside the empire state building, they will confuse you a lot and they will always give you false information. They told me, if you buy ticket from me you will be on 86^th floor in half an hour from now and if you go through official window it will take you one and half hour. I still avoided him and purchased the ticket from official window and I was on deck in 45 minutes. Just for 15 minutes more he was charging me double amount.

Anyways, when I get in ticket queue, I first have to pass through security check, this security check is stricter that your airport, I have to remove shoes, belts and then pass through scanner. After purchasing ticket you will be taken to elevator queue which was kind of big but it’s always moving and it goes from one room to another so you will not see actually how big queue is. When I was following queue to elevator, at one spot Empire State officials took free photograph of mine, they were taking everyone who is in queue and handover ticket which had photo number.

After lots of zigzag finally we entered in elevator, it was not very big, small one which can hardly accommodate 12 people. They were having 8 elevators like that. This was taking people up and also bringing down the people who are on deck. Elevators are auto operated, we don’t have to press any button from inside, and the security will operate the elevator remotely. That elevator took us on 80^th floor within half minute. From 80^th to 86^th, we have to take another elevator and again queue for the same. While standing in queue, the walls of building will show you history of Empire State that how it’s built, who all top celebrities visited Empire State.

We came on deck from second elevator, Deck is divided into two parts, outer deck and inner, inner deck is closed with glass and outer deck is open. We came on outer deck from South. South view will show you Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, WTC, Lower Manhattan, and Brooklyn Bridge. It’s very clear but windy weather, I could not stand more than minute there, I took snaps as quick as I could and came to East view. East view will show you stretch of Long Island, Queens, and famous Chrysler building. Chrysler building was the tallest building in Manhattan before Empire State and also it is picturised in Spider man movie. From North view, I located my office building, Times Square, very far Central park and from West view Jersey City. I took as many photographs as I can but it was very windy and chilled so I thought of going down.

We then come back to elevator this time not big queue; it took us on 80^th floor. From 80^th floor back to ground floor.

Empire State was our last attraction for the day. We ended up our tour and back to home.