The only time I was in New York City was when my best friends lived in Newark and I spent the week at their apartment in 1999.  We were in our second year of college and when I got there I told them I wanted to spend the day in Manhattan.  We did all of the touristy crap, from Ellis and Liberty Islands to dinner at the World Trade Center.  It was a truly amazing thing to see,  then to see it all violently come falling down a couple of years later.