New York, New York!

 

Our first night in New York, we walked down to Times Square! After our laid back time in Costa Rica, it was a sensory overload; so many people, so many lights and so much noise. I felt my heart speed up just from standing there, it was amazing for us to see for the first time but I after a few trips back there I can definitely understand why locals choose to avoid it.

 

Times square was our first taste of New York, but in a week here we tried to sample as much as possible. Our days here were much more action packed than our days in South America.

For the first few days we used a New York pass to fit in some of the main attractions and tours. We started with a food on foot tour in Midtown where we were staying, this was helpful in showing us some good, cheap places to eat for the week. In the afternoon we went on a tall ship cruise on East Bay to check out the skyline and Statue of Liberty views. To see the city lights we went up the Empire State Building after dinner.

The next day we headed downtown to get a walking tour of Wall street and surrounds. My favorite little story on this tour was regarding an angry mob pulling down a statue of King George in a downtown park in order to melt it down for bullets to shoot the British. In the afternoon we checked out some modern art at MoMa and Guggenheim museums.

The Wall Street Bull

And, from a different angle... Supposedly this will bring financial luck

Guggenheim Museum

For the final day of our New York Pass we visited the American Museum of Natural History and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Met was amazing, such a huge collection, you could probably spend a week looking around it. We also went up to the top of the Rockefeller center for more views of the famous New York sky line. Then we decided to go check out the listings of half price tickets on Broadway. Luckily, we were able to get tickets to "A Street Car Named Desire", unluckily we had to go straight from the booth to the show so I didn't get to go put on a nice dress.

 

Unplanned, we just happened to be in New York for Independence Day. This meant that the city was a bit quieter than usual for the week that we were here, since many locals go away. It also meant that we got to see some fireworks! We spent the day going for another walk through downtown and having a picnic in Central Park. We did consider going to the 4th of July Hot Dog Eating Competition on Coney Island, but in the end we decided it was probably best avoided. Finally, we followed the masses to watch a lot of red, white and blue fireworks in the evening.

Enjoying a picnic in Central park

Thursday we decided to head across to Brooklyn. It was nice strolling through this neighborhood. There were some really cool cafes, shops and galleries. It was also nice to have some New York cheesecake for lunch and walk across the iconic Brooklyn Bridge even though it was sweltering in the sun.

 

That night we went to Citi Field to watch the New York Mets take on the Philadelphia Phillies. For anyone who doesn't follow American sports, this was a baseball game. I didn't really expect to enjoy this too much, but we got really lucky, with the Mets taking the lead and winning in the last innings. I was up, screaming and clapping with all the Yanks - Let's Go Mets!

On our last Day in New York we did some shopping, mainly window shopping but still fun. Our favorite line being, "on our next trip to New York..." Then to finish off a very frantic week we enjoyed cocktails on a rooftop bar and had one last evening stroll through Central Park.