Hayley & Shaun in Canada: New York City, NY

The Big Apple!

May 14th - May 23rd

We are finally in NYC! We arrived by train from Hartford at about 4pm in the afternoon and managed to find our way by subway over to Brooklyn to check in to our hostel. And of course, being in NYC for the first time, a place we've both wanted to go for such a long time, things couldn't just go smoothly for us could they? Of course not! When we got to the hostel the guy at the front desk says 'oh yes, i have something to talk to you about. We are closing the hostel on Monday" (2 days time) "You can stay here for two nights but then you need to leave" So when I confirmed our reservation for nine nights last week by email and they said yes everything is fine, what they really meant was yes everything is fine until we close! So we were both very annoyed and very stressed as we were in such a big city with pretty much every hotel booked out because it was graduation week and we thought we'd found a bargain hostel and we now had to spend nearly 3 times the amount we had budgeted for. So we stayed there the first night and managed to book a hotel in the city for the next night and unfortunately due to most hotels being sold out or $500 a night, we ended up having to change hotels 6 times! This was really frustrating as we have quite the amount of bags and we kept having to worry about it every day while trying to enjoy NYC. But we did stay at some nice places in really good locations in the end.

After all of that debacle, we managed to enjoy our first day of our city tour. This was another hop-on-hop-off tour that did various loops around town and also a night time tour which was cool, except freezing cold! Unfortunately we had really bad weather in New York, only one day out of nine was sunny, the rest were cold and rainy. The city tour was really good as it showed us Brooklyn, Uptown, Downtown, Harlem and the Times Square area. Being in Times Square was very surreal and really fun as there were so many signs and billboards, but also lots of shopping and restaurants and entertainment. We had some really good tour guides, and some not so good guides as well! We had the city tour for 2 days and we also got a free harbour cruise that we did a few days later that took us all the way around the island and took us very close up to the Statue of Liberty. It was really awesome to see it so close up!

We started to see lots of the things we had seen on TV or movies or heard about from various things and it was an amazing experience to see it all in real life and be a part of the ‘vibe’ of New York. One of the things we wanted to do was see a Broadway show and there is a discount ticket centre in Times Square where you can buy same-day tickets for basically 50% off the normal price which is pretty good! We lined up for what felt like three hours as it was pouring rain to get tickets to Catch Me If You Can (some might know it as it was a movie starring Tom Hanks and Leonardo DiCaprio). We both liked the movie so we thought it would be a good show too. We got really good seats in the front section just off to the right hand side and the show was wonderful. It was a musical so lots of great singing and dancing and it was really funny too. It was a great experience!

We also did a TV and Movie Sites Tour that went for about 3 hours and showed us heaps of places featured in many TV shows and movies which was really cool. We got out at some places and saw the ‘Friends’ building (which is a lot smaller in real life!) We saw Washington Square Park that is in When Harry Met Sally and even the Law and Order courthouse steps, and plenty of places from Seinfeld too! The tour was really good and the tour guide was really funny and also told us where some more famous places where to visit, including Carrie’s house from Sex and the City! We went there and took photos (someone actually lives there) and had a cupcake from the famous cupcake store around the corner.

Now, if I tried to tell you every single thing we did in New York that would take about a month, so you will have to wait for the full story when we get home. But I will tell you just a few more things (in brief) that we saw and experienced in New York.

- Went to a HUGE M&M World where you could practically buy absolutely anything with M&M’s on it.

- Walked around SoHo and Bleecker St

- Visited the Ground Zero site and the memorial in the Church across the road. Also saw the preview for the memorial and new buildings in construction. Very moving experience and hard to believe that’s where it all happened

- Walked up and down Broadway and 5^th Avenue and saw many famous designer stores

- Had shakes and burgers at a famous ‘Shake Shack’ in Madison Square Park where people line up for hours just to get a great burger

- Saw the Flatiron Building and we went to Wall St and saw the Stock Exchange

- Went to Bloomingdales and Macy’s and had desert and the famous Serendipity

- Went to the top of Empire State Building and got a great view of New York, Sleepless in Seattle style!

- Went to Grand Central Station and it is just as grand and beautiful inside as it looks in books and movies!

- Saw the Brooklyn Bridge and had hot dogs and pretzels from street vendors

- Went to an awesome bar called 1,2,3 Burger Shot Beer. Yep it’s $1 Burgers, $2 Shots and $3 beers!

- Spent an afternoon in Central park (the only day it was nice weather) and saw parts of Central park Zoo and the Metropolitan Museum of Art

- Saw the Public Library and Rockefeller Centre and Trump Tower

- Had soup from the Soup Nazi!

So that’s just a few of the things and we can’t wait to share many more stories and lots of photos with you when we get home. We had an amazing time in New York seeing all of the things we’ve always wanted to see plus so much more. It’s such a big city though and we definitely need to go back and do more!

Stay tuned for our New Jersey blog coming up soon!

Love Hayley & Shaun