October 22, 2016

NYC | travel post

New York City is somewhere I've always thought would be so. much. fun. to visit, but never thought I would. Not in my single 20's, anyway. Our family vacations are usually in more relaxing, restful locations so I just didn't give it a lot of thought. (Except, you know, "wow, that would be fun.")

Until this summer at a family reunion talking to one of my cousins about how our traveling friends were all starting to get married and the ones still willing to travel with us weren't interested in the big cities.

"We should go!"
"A family girls trip? Yes!"
"Hey mom, y'all wanna go to New York City for a weekend?"

By the next week we had bought our plane tickets. A few weeks later our hotel was booked. Then we bought city passes, bus tickets, and last Wednesday we got up at 3:30am to get on a plane!

all of our selfie stick photos

We got there at 10:30am, checked into our hotel room (30th floor!)...


...then grabbed coffee and pastries on our way to Grand Central Station. We giggled our way through our first subway ride on our way to Times Square. Wednesday also included the Top off the Rock,  Central Park, and the Museum of Natural History. We ended the day soaking our feet and eating take out Chinese food after walking around 8 miles.

The second day (Thursday) found us on the top of a double decker bus where we saw a whole lot of the city on our way to the 911 monument and museum. We walked what felt like forever to find a TKTS booth to buy our Broadway tickets (sold at half price in 3 locations in the city), then got drenched on the rest of the bus ride but saw the United Nations building, Trump Tower, and a lot of other stuff that wasn't on our list. ;)  We came back to our room late that afternoon and got dressed up to go see Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway (after walking nearly 10 miles). On the way to the subway we stopped at Momofuku's (a milk bar) for their famous cereal milk ice cream (worth it!), and on the way back stopped to take a picture at Tiffany's. Fiddler was incredible, and it also allowed us to see Times Square at night. Since it was nearly a 3 hour play, we once again ate Chinese food because even in NYC, most restaurants are closed at 11pm and we wanted to just eat in bed. We walked over 11 miles that day!



On our third day in the city (Friday) we got up a bit earlier and headed to the Statue of Liberty. It was a cold morning and we rode on [the very windy] top of the Ellis Island Ferry. The statue was beautiful, though, and we also saw Trinity Church ("on the corner of Broad and Main"), the bull of Wall Street, and ate lunch at Shake Shack! It lived up to it's wonderful reputation - I ordered the Shack Burger, cheese fries, and a chocolate malted. We took the hoho (hope on/hop off) bus again and saw some more of the city. We walked around Chinatown, went in "the" Macy's on 5th Avenue (34th Street) and bought some warm clothes at H&M and Forever21 (only place we could afford on 6th Avenue haha) for the 2-hour nighttime bus tour of Manhattan and Brooklyn. We were frozen solid when we got off, so we got a pepperoni pizza from Ray's and a slice of blueberry cheesecake from Lindy's and took it back to the room. Walked over 10 miles again altogether.



Saturday morning we packed our stuff up, got one last bagel and acai bowl, and walked down 5th Avenue. We went in Saks, St. Paul's Cathedral, and got coffee at Ralph's Coffee above Ralph Lauren before heading back to catch our ride to the airport!


We're still catching up on sleep and I have a new appreciation for the quiet calm of my little southern town ("green acres is the place for me!"), but I wouldn't trade this experience or the memories we made for anything. It was an incredible adventure that I'm so thankful to have had.

And since we took pictures of practically everything we ate, here are those... ;)