After the trip was over I said I would never do it again…. We are currently planning another trip. It’s been long enough that I have forgotten the pain of the trip and want to try again.
Overall the trip was fun. However, it was crowded as you can imagine, but that didn’t bother me as much as the awful smell did. It was snowing right when we got there, but unfortunately it didn’t snow any time after that.
We had a driver scheduled to pick us up and drop us off at the airport as well as take us to the Statue of Liberty. This was nice that we already had this preplanned and didn’t have to look for a taxi except one time and that one time was awful. After we went to the Statue of Liberty we had a cab take us to Brooklyn so we could walk around. When we were trying to get back to the city it was difficult. There really weren’t any cabs just driving around so we had to use an app. It showed that they were sending a driver. It took a while for him to get to us. We told him to take us to the Harry Potter store, but the traffic was so awful we knew that if we went there, we wouldn’t get back in time to make it to our show. So, we told him to just take us to our hotel instead. Since we had used the app, we had to prepay to go to the Harry Potter store. Distance wise, our hotel was not that much farther. We figured once we had reached the Harry Potter store, he would start the meter. That’s not what he did. He started it as soon as we asked him to take us to our hotel again. Since we had already prepaid for the original trip, he was double charging us. He also was screaming, talking about religion and almost hit a car. When we got to our hotel, my mom argued about how much we owed him and he was fighting it and then finally yelled at us to just pay him whatever we thought. We ended up having to schedule our own ride back to the airport since the rest of our group had their flight changed to crazy early in the morning. Luckily my mom and I were able to keep our original flight so we were able to do things before we had to head to the airport that day.
Was in a great location for the things we wanted to do. We were able to walk to almost everything, but the hotel was not directly in the middle of everything. The room was a good size. We were pretty high up, but could not see out of the window since it was almost touching the ceiling. Not sure the reasoning behind that. It was also loud at night. Lots of traffic noise. I did enjoy getting back to the hotel after a long day, because it didn’t smell terrible.
After we had arrived and changed clothes, we went walking around the city. We decided to just get something quick to eat so we got food from one of the carts. Probably one of the worst hotdogs I have ever had. Couldn’t eat. Threw it away. We didn’t expect it to be great, but we thought we could at least eat it.
We had just got our day started and were trying to figure out where to eat for breakfast. We walked into one place and it was setup like a cafeteria and none of the food looked very good. There was also only one other customer in there if that tells you anything. As we were walking we saw a building with a pretty tree inside so we went in to take photos. We were discussing options for where to eat and could tell that the guy at the front desk was listening. So we asked him between these two options which would you recommend, and he said Oh, Liberty Bagels for sure. We went to Liberty Bagels and the line was out the door, but moved rather quickly. I got the last holiday marbled bagel they had and got the _ sandwich. We ate it outside at tables in front of Dior. The bagel was fantastic.
Hot chocolate and pastries
We didn’t have much time before our show, so we were struggling to find a place to eat that could get us in. We called _ and they told us that if we could be here in 5 minutes and order immediately they would take us. I wasn’t very hungry and all of the meals were huge and expensive so I just got a side of Macaroni and Cheese. The servers had fun with the fact that all I ordered was Mac and Cheese. It came in a small crock and one of the servers actually scooped some out and presented it on a plate for me and said just like they do at Disney World.
We lucked out at were able to get a time slot that had already technically passed when we purchased the tickets so we got to go to the front of the line. The views were good, but not that exciting. We had done the top of the Empire State Building before and would like to go at night next time.
Courtyard Christmas Tree
Walked around and did a 360 video which was fun.
We actually got to go up in the Statue of Liberty which was cool. Part of our group went to Ellis Island which made it very difficult for them to get back. The ferry starts at the port in NYC, stops at the Statue of Liberty and lets people off and on, then goes to Ellis Island to do the same before heading back to the city. Except not very many people get off at Ellis Island which means not very many people can get on to get back to the city. They had to wait for 4 different ferries before they were able to get on so they wasted a lot of time just standing in line.
Brooklyn Bridge Shot
We ended up going to an off Broadway show and it is one of my favorites that I have ever seen. The Play that Goes Wrong – It was really funny.
We didn’t have much time to go into stores. We really only went into a few including Anthropologie where of course I bought something. There are several Christmas markets that we went to and bought things at.
It was not very big and not very much there. The food court was huge and was crazy crowded.
Holiday market and ice skating rink
Holiday market
