New York City

This post is a short summary of our 3 day holiday in New York City - a little bit different to our usual outdoor adventure posts. Don't worry, there will be lots of food pics included.

From memory, the flight was about 5 hours, and I think we lost about 3 hours going over, but obviously gained it coming back. We landed in torrential rain, which was actually the forecast for the 3 days we were there - Lucas will remember I was a bit upset about this. This trip was at the end of May, so besides from the rain, I think it was the perfect temperature as I've heard the city gets freezing in winter and sweltering in summer.

We caught a bus from the airport to our accommodation in the city (near Times Square). I think it was supposed to be a 45 minute bus ride but turned a lot longer when we got stuck in gridlocked traffic about 500m from our accommodation. We had waited there for about 10 minutes before we realised enough was enough, so we thanked the bus driver and got out into the pouring rain, showing up to our hotel 5 minutes later drenched.

We booked ourselves in for the Great Gatsby Broadway show on this first evening. We were in a bit of a rush so got changed, quickly ate some soup dumpling for dinner (which are hard to eat quick cause they're so hot), and then raced to the Broadway show near Times Square. The show was very entertaining and the acting/singing was on another level. You can see how movie stars sometimes start their careers in Broadway. I had watched the movie before this, and it was very similar to that so easy for me to follow. Lucas had not seen the movie, so everything was new for him! We have now since watched the movie together.

Day 1 in NYC still had very off and on rain, so we wore our rain jackets and I actually also bought a $5 umbrella in the afternoon, but miraculously it stopped raining for the rest of the trip after that, the power of an umbrella. We ventured out for the day, exploring West Village for brunch and we stopped off at the famous Friends building.

We also visited the Financial District such as Wall Street and the World Trade Center.

On our way back to the hotel we explored Times Square since it was less rainy. SO MANY LIGHTS - very overstimulating.

For dinner we ventured back towards West Village so we (I) could tick off a viral pizza spot, Mamas Too. We were going to go to a comedy show that evening but decided on watching Project Hail Mary in the movies instead since we wanted to watch it at some point anyway.

Day 2 we ventured around under the Brooklyn Bridge and then got on the free Staten Island ferry. We technically stepped off the boat onto Staten Island, but then walked around and got straight back on the boat. The reason we did this was because it was a free way to get closer to the Statue of Liberty, meanwhile, there are tours that cost you an arm and a leg that do the same thing basically.

We went for an afternoon drink at a rooftop bar that faces the Empire State Building. Lucas was most excited about the engineering behind the Empire State Building.

Next we wandered over to Chelsea where we walked along the High Line, visited the Chelsea markets, which is where we also grabbed some dinner, and stopped off at the Little Island. Another action packed day.

On our final morning we went for a morning run around Central Park, noticing the resemblance to what we've seen in countless movies. In fact, it's not until you're in NYC that you realise such a large portion of movies we watch feature all of the sites we visited. It was definitely a touristy few days but it was really fun. Nice to mix up our holiday type every now and then.