When we arrived and spent our first few days in New York, I wrote about our trip to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Today's installment picks up exactly where I left off back then – on our last day in the city. We deliberately saved it for the things we really wanted to enjoy at a leisurely pace: Central Park, Fifth Avenue, a horse-drawn carriage ride (which ended up being quite unplanned), Louis Vuitton, Trump Tower, and dinner at the Japanese restaurant Benihana.
The next morning, we were due to fly to Florida, and I wanted our final memory of New York to feel a little like a fairy tale.
Park Lane Hotel and a short walk to Central Park
We stayed at the Park Lane hotel on Central Park South, and the location turned out to be a brilliant choice. Central Park was literally just around the corner – all we had to do was cross one street and we were there. We arrived after returning from Liberty Island, where we had spent the morning, so we still had a relatively good amount of time and energy left before evening.
At the entrance to Central Park, on both sides of the paths, you will find those typical New York food stands – yellow-and-blue umbrellas bearing the name Sabrett, which everyone in America knows. Sabrett has been New York's hot dog standard since 1926, and its carts are as iconic a part of the city as yellow taxis. So we bought hot dogs from one of them, because what else should you have as your first meal in Central Park?
Honestly, it wasn't exactly bad, but it wasn't the best either. Most importantly, though, it satisfied our hunger, so we did not have to think about food again until dinner. And it was worth it for that moment alone, eating a hot dog in a bun on the corner of Central Park, with skyscrapers behind us and one of the world's most famous parks ahead.
Central Park: the largest green oasis in the middle of Manhattan
Now allow me a brief digression, because Central Park could easily fill an entire article of its own.
This park is enormous – it covers approximately 341 hectares (843 acres) and stretches from 59th to 110th Street, almost the entire length of Manhattan. For comparison, Central Park is about 20 times larger than Wenceslas Square; Prague's Stromovka and Letná parks could both fit inside it with room to spare. And when you are standing in the park, you do not feel at all as though you are in the middle of the world's most expensive real estate market.
It opened in 1858 and was the first man-made public park in the United States. It was designed by landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, who won a public design competition with their “Greensward Plan.” Few people know that before the park was built, the area was home to impoverished settlements, farms, and a free African American community called Seneca Village. Around 1,600 people had to be displaced to make way for the park.
To create the park from rocky and marshy terrain, workers used more gunpowder than was fired during the Battle of Gettysburg and moved more than three million cubic meters of soil. They planted over 270,000 trees and shrubs. Today, the park has more than 18,000 trees and is home to over 200 species of birds because it lies along the Atlantic Flyway.
What you can see and do in Central Park:
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Central Park Zoo – a small but popular zoo near the southeastern corner of the park (made famous in part by the animated movie Madagascar)
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Bethesda Terrace and Fountain – more on that shortly
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Strawberry Fields – the “Imagine” mosaic dedicated to John Lennon, who was murdered across from the park near the Dakota building
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Belvedere Castle – a small stone castle perched on a rock, with a perfect panoramic view from its lookout
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The Mall – the famous avenue of plane trees that you have probably seen in every other New York movie
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The Great Lawn, Sheep Meadow, Ramble – expansive lawns and woodlands where free Philharmonic concerts and the legendary Shakespeare in the Park are held in summer
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Wollman Rink – winter ice skating beneath the skyscrapers (more on that in a moment)
Approximately 42 million people visit each year, making Central Park the most visited urban park in the United States.
Ducks, pretzels, and turtles straight out of a fairy tale
We entered the park from Fifth Avenue, and the first thing to capture our hearts was the view of The Pond, with the skyscrapers of Billionaires' Row rising behind it – some of the world's slenderest and most expensive residential towers. The tallest of them, Central Park Tower, stands 472 meters tall and is New York's second-tallest building after One World Trade Center.
By the water, we came across some ducks, which we fed with leftover food, and then bought some typical New York pretzels from another stand – very salty, crunchy, and served warm straight from the cart. We ate them as we continued walking, and the ducks seemed to take a liking to us very quickly.
Then came something I had not expected at all: two turtles were basking on a rock in the middle of the pond. It is precisely these little moments that make Central Park so magical – in the middle of the concrete jungle, you encounter wildlife as though you were somewhere far beyond the city.
Wollman Rink: skating beneath the skyscrapers
Our next stop while walking through the park was something that looked like an ice-skating arena. And that is exactly what it was – Wollman Rink, an outdoor ice rink open since 1949. This is where New Yorkers come to skate in winter with the Midtown skyline behind them, and it is one of the most iconic images of Manhattan in winter. In summer, the rink is transformed into the Flipper's Roller Boogie Palace amusement venue.
At the time of our visit, the rink was still being prepared, so we only viewed it from a distance, but you could already feel the atmosphere.
A carriage ride: two hours I will always remember
All along the southern edge of Central Park, you will see white horse-drawn carriages. They have been operating here since the 19th century – even before the park officially opened, the so-called Carriage Parade took place here, a daily procession of wealthy New Yorkers in carriages. This tradition has survived in a diminished form to this day, although it is now primarily a tourist attraction.
Before leaving, we decided that we could not miss the opportunity to take a ride. I no longer remember the exact price, but I think it came to around 50 dollars (prices vary depending on the length of the route and the season, generally ranging from 60 to 160 dollars).
And I have to say – it was worth every cent. The driver took us around the park's most famous sites for almost two hours, stopping at every major landmark to give us time to look around and often telling us which movies had been filmed there. And there are certainly plenty of them. Movies filmed in Central Park include:
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Home Alone 2: Lost in New York – Kevin runs through Bethesda Terrace, among other places
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Spider-Man – the scene with Mary Jane
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Enchanted – the famous dance number by the fountain
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When Harry Met Sally, Avengers, John Wick, Elf, Ghostbusters…
The driver gradually showed us where all these scenes had taken place. We rode past the famous underpass (arcade) with its colorful tiled ceiling and along sunlit avenues, and we saw New York from a new perspective – from the height of a carriage and without any traffic around us.
Bethesda Terrace and the Angel of the Waters Fountain – the heart of Central Park
One of the places the driver pointed out to us as “truly significant” was Bethesda Terrace and Bethesda Fountain. Honestly, at that moment I did not remember exactly why it was so important, but after returning home I looked it up, and it is a genuinely fascinating story.
At the center of the fountain stands the bronze statue Angel of the Waters, which was designed by sculptor Emma Stebbins in 1868 and unveiled in Central Park in 1873. In doing so, Emma Stebbins became the first woman in history to receive a commission for a major public work of art in New York City.
The fountain also has another powerful symbolic meaning. It celebrates the opening of the Croton Aqueduct in 1842, which finally brought drinking water to New York. Before that, people drank water from contaminated wells, and the city was regularly ravaged by cholera epidemics – during one outbreak, cholera killed 3,500 New Yorkers in just two months. The angel holds a lily as a symbol of purity, while the base features four cherubs representing Peace, Health, Purity, and Temperance. For the statue, Emma Stebbins drew inspiration from the biblical story in the Gospel of John, in which an angel gives healing powers to the waters of the Pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem.
If this fountain also looks familiar from the screen, you are not mistaken. It has appeared in countless movies: in addition to the aforementioned Home Alone 2, it was featured in Elf, Enchanted, Avengers, John Wick, and the legendary Angels in America. It is no exaggeration to say that it is one of the most photographed and filmed locations in Manhattan.
Beneath the terrace is another gem that I would not want to overlook: Bethesda Arcade, with its Minton-tiled ceiling – more than 15,000 handmade Victorian-style ceramic tiles, forming the only ceiling of its kind in the world. The arcade underwent a major renovation in 2007, and street musicians now often perform there. The acoustics are phenomenal.
Fifth Avenue, the giant Louis Vuitton trunk, and Trump Tower
After the park, we headed to Fifth Avenue – New York's most famous shopping street and one of the most expensive streets in the world. There was one thing in particular I wanted to see there: the Louis Vuitton building, which looked like giant stacked trunks.
And this “box” has a story of its own. The Louis Vuitton flagship at the corner of 57th Street and Fifth Avenue (1 East 57th Street) is undergoing a massive renovation – according to the plans, the existing building is to be replaced by a new 25-story tower that will double the store's floor space. But Louis Vuitton did not cover the scaffolding around the construction site with an ordinary tarp. Instead, for 2024 it commissioned a gigantic façade in the shape of six stacked LV trunks in the historic Trianon Grey shade – exactly the same color the brand has used for its trunks since the 19th century. And it is truly massive – just one of the “handles” on the façade weighs more than 2 tons (5,000 pounds). Louis Vuitton has used similar “illusion façades” before on the Champs-Élysées in Paris, where, incidentally, it sparked a rather heated debate over whether it was advertising or art (art ultimately won).
A short distance away stands Trump Tower – a 58-story (marketed as 68-story) skyscraper dating from 1983, built by the then “mere” real estate developer Donald Trump. Inside is a publicly accessible five-story atrium clad in pink marble and featuring an artificial waterfall. Trump had (and still has) a luxurious three-story penthouse at the very top, where he lived before taking office as president in 2017. Whatever anyone may think about current politics, architecturally, it is one of those buildings that simply belongs to Midtown Manhattan.
We only walk past it quickly because the sun is already sinking toward the horizon and we want to find somewhere for dinner.
Dinner at Benihana: a chef who cooks right in front of you
Our final New York experience was a visit to the Japanese restaurant Benihana. And it deserves a little more context, because if you have not heard of it before, it is literally one of the most important restaurant concepts of the 20th century in the United States.
Benihana was founded in New York in 1964. Its founder was Hiroaki “Rocky” Aoki – a Japanese wrestler who came to the United States on a scholarship, studied during the day, and earned money at night by selling ice cream from a van in Harlem. Using the 10,000 dollars he had saved, he opened the very first restaurant, with four tables, on 56th Street in Manhattan, bringing the concept of teppanyaki to America – cooking on a hot steel griddle directly in front of guests.
Incidentally, teppanyaki is not traditional Japanese cuisine in the true sense of the term. It originated in postwar Japan – specifically in Kobe in 1945, where chef Shigeji Fujioka at the Misono restaurant began cooking in this style for American soldiers. It is therefore an American idea cooked up in Japan and brought back to America – exactly what Rocky Aoki embraced and turned into a show.
The name Benihana (“red flower” – safflower) was conceived by his father Yunosuke when, after the bombing of Tokyo in 1945, he walked through the rubble and noticed a single living red flower growing from beneath the ruins. Rocky later persuaded his father to let him use the name for the American restaurant as well.
For the first six months, Rocky reportedly slept on the floor of his restaurant's bathroom because he could not afford housing. The turning point came with an enthusiastic review in the New York Herald Tribune – after which Muhammad Ali, Sean Connery, the Beatles, and dozens of other celebrities made Benihana a regular destination. Today, the chain has more than 80 restaurants around the world and has served over 100 million meals. Rocky Aoki died in 2008, but his family continues his legacy – incidentally, his son Steve Aoki is now one of the world's best-known DJs, while his daughter Devon is a model and actress.
Now for the experience itself. We were seated at a shared U-shaped table, with a huge hot teppanyaki griddle built into the center. The chef arrived with a cart full of meat, vegetables, fish, and eggs – and the show began. Chopping, tossing, knife tricks, a flaming onion volcano, catching eggs in his hat, throwing shrimp directly into guests' mouths – all performed exactly according to the classic Benihana routine, yet still amazing for anyone seeing it for the first time.
We ate beef, chicken, shrimp, vegetables, grilled rice, and the recommended miso soup to start. Leia was absolutely thrilled – especially by the onion volcano – and I enjoyed it immensely as well. The food is admittedly slightly overpriced (you can easily spend more than 60–80 dollars per person), but what you are really paying for here is the experience. And the experience is definitely worth it.
The day ends, New York outside the windows, Florida ahead
After dinner, we walked a few blocks back toward the hotel. It was already dark, the streets were glowing in that quintessentially New York way, and I kept thinking about how pleasantly we had spent our last day in the city.
New York is a city that never stops surprising you, whether it is your first, third, or tenth visit. I left feeling that although a few days had been enough to get reacquainted with it, they were nowhere near enough to see everything. And that is probably the best thing you can say about a destination.
The next morning, we packed our bags – Florida was waiting for us, along with sunshine and a completely different chapter of our journey. But that is a story for another time.
