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 Steakwich sandwich. We ate it outside at tables in front of Dior. The bagel was fantastic.
We had been walking around Central Park and we were starting to get cold and hungry so we decided to stop in the Central Park Café. We got hot chocolate and various pastries all of which were good.
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 of course had to go to Rockefeller Center to see the tree and the ice skating rink. We went during the day and the night as well. I was happy to see that the gift shop still had the tree snow globe that I had seen several years ago and was able to carefully get a few photos of it in front of the tree. I was hoping to get some better pictures, but was worried about it breaking with all of the crowds around us.
We lucked out and 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.
We went to Radio City Music Hall and took lots of photos of the building itself as well as the giant candy canes and ornaments by it. One of the shows we knew we wanted to go see was the Radio City Rockettes. My mom and I had seen them before when they came to St. Louis once. The show is so much fun to watch and they are all such talented dancers.
The Lotte Palace Christmas tree was on my list of must visit trees. It is such a pretty tree and there are usually opportunities to get photos without a ton of people in front of it.
We of course had to walk around time square at night. It was fun to see all of the lights and we ended up doing one of those 360 videos which turned out really fun. It is not a place that I would want to spend a ton of time in though.
In a previous trip to NYC we took a boat ride that went past the Statue of Liberty, but did not go on the island to see it. This time we actually went up into the crown of the Statue of Liberty which was cool, but a ton of stairs. 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.
After we went to the Statue of Liberty, we headed to Brooklyn. I knew that I wanted to get the shot of the Manhattan Bridge framing the Empire State Building which is possible in Dumbo. There were lots of other people doing the same thing. We also went to the Brooklyn Holiday and Flea Market which was not that exciting. It was pretty small. We stopped in the food court and it was crazy crowded and there was hardly and room to even walk around. We ended up getting food from two different vendors and all of it was really good.
We had decided that we wanted to see a play while we were there. We all agreed on The Play that goes Wrong. It was off Broadway and a little hard to find the theatre, but it is one of my favorite plays that I have ever seen. It was so funny and the theatre was pretty small so you got to be close to the stage.
We didn’t have a whole lot of time to do any actual store shopping in the city. I did get to see the cherry Anthropologie windows which are one of my favorite displays they have done. We did have a few minutes to spare so we popped into Anthropologie and of course I bought something there. I was looking for a specific tree topper which they didn’t have, but I did find a really fun neon yellow sequin clutch.
There are several holiday markets throughout the city and we tried to go to as many as we could. We all bought a few things at the markets. I mostly bought Christmas ornaments. The Grand Central Station market was relatively small, but they had a fun selection and it was nice that it was inside. We had planned to go to Bryant Park the last day of our trip before we had to head to the airport. However, the rest of our group ended up not being able to go with us since their flight got changed and they had to leave early in the morning. For our next trip, I plan on going to Bryant Park earlier in the trip so we can have more time there. I had found an ornament online that they sold there, so it was my mission to find it and I was able to get one. The ice skating rink and huge tree made for fun photos. There are a ton of food vendors there and I have heard a lot of really good things about them. Unfortunately, We did not have time to try any before we had to leave for the airport.
