Up, Up & Away...

On Boxing Day morning Tom and I met Mops and Pops at Pier 6, at the Downtown Manhattan Heliport because we were about to go up in a HELICOPTER!!!

From over two blocks away we could here the blades spinning round and the helicopters taking off from the river, and as we got closer we started to see them all in the air...

 

 After waiting for a wee while, we were given our life jacket belts, watched our safety video and then were escorted out onto the helipads to board our chopper...

 Then it was another short wait while another helicopter landed, and then it was time for take off!

Our pilot (who looked far too young to be flying a helicopter, let alone be in the army - which he said he was!), took us up, flung us round and headed took us down to the bottom of Manhattan over Governors Island...

... towards Ellis Island and Liberty Island...

... then round the bottom of the island and up the west side of Manhattan, passing close to the new World Trade Center...

The views were absolutely breath taking, the weather was perfect, the sun was beaming on New York casting crisp clear shadows from the skyscrapers, it was just amazing...

 It was fantastic seeing New York from such a different view, seeing all the different heights of the buildings, seeing the way things are laid out. It's funny, when you're down on the ground and driving or walking around Manhattan you get a real sense of the grid system of the roads - but from the angle we were looking at it at in the helicopter, it sometimes just looked like a jiggled mass of buildings.

We went up as high are about 72nd street, in line with Central Park before turning round...

It was fantastic seeing the park from that height too. Seeing the park from the Top of the Rock is great, but this was far far better, you could see everything, it really is a big old park!

Then we flew back down the Hudson River back towards the Statue of Liberty before going round Battery Park and back up to Pier 6...

Then it was back down smoothly onto the Helipad. It was all just so incredible, I can't actually believe it happened. It was such a fantastic surprise from Mops and Pops on Christmas morning, opening the envelope that said we were going up in the helicopter... I'll never forget it!

It was absolutely amazing!