New York, New York Part 2…

Brilliant….. another 8 weeks have passed and there has been no blog in sight! I feel like I’m always apologising for it, life is life and to be honest it’s been another one of those terms where I haven’t had time to do anything but work, eat, sleep, repeat and so the blogging had to be put on hold.

However, the summer is nearing and I’ll be having another operation, meaning a long recovery time, leaving plenty of time to catch up on all the TV series I have missed out on (Killing Eve and Line of Duty, I’m looking at you) plus do a little more summer blogs, happy days! Here’s hoping!

Now down to it. Day 3, 4 and 5 of New York here we come!

Day 3- IHop, Ground Zero, Baseball, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Rockefeller (Attempt 1) and Rooftop Bar.

Now we had many goals and things we wanted to do whilst we were in New York. I wanted to climb the Empire State Building, and do a Handstand in Central Park amongst other things and Katie wanted to beat her fear of heights by climbing something tall i.e the Empire State Building! But also, she wanted to visit the tourist attraction… IHop. We literally googled mapped that for ages to track one down, jumped on the Big Bus, got lost and ended up calling an Uber. Eventually, we were there! I forgot how big American pancakes were and we ordered two lots, plus two plates of bacon… needless to say we couldn’t finish it all and didn’t eat again until after the baseball in the evening.

After stuffing our faces, we jumped on the subway (what an experience!) for the first time and navigated our way to the barrier. We then couldn’t work out how to get a ticket and ended up having to be proper tourists, by asking stupid questions to the lovely lady in the box, (Embarrassing when you know how much we travel around London on the trains and tubes…) We made our way over to Ground Zero; What. A. Place. Everyone must visit here, a beautifully haunting place full of memories, and stories. Looking down into the waterfalls cascading down into the bottomless holes, it brings it home, what actually happened there. Surrounded by trees and the new One World Trade Centre, Ground Zero really stood out and that will stick with me for the rest of my life. We ended up returning to Ground Zero on Day 4 as we were running low on time.

Next up, we legged it back on the subway (got it right first time, this time!) and headed off to the Yankees Stadium. I forgot how much I loved baseball when I saw it for the first time in Florida and this just reminded me how much fun it really is. The experience is not only about the game on the (gigantic) pitch, it is about what is going on around it. There are games, and competitions and a brilliant game going on in front of us. Yankees (who we were supporting for the day… sorry Tampa Bay Rays!), started off really well and were quick to go ahead. Then the innings came and went… not much happening, quite an even game until around the 5^th innings when the White Sox scored a home run, which made the man in front of us jump out of his seat at quite an alarming speed and fist pump the air like he had won the lottery! Very amusing. The Yankees ended up losing the game, but as annoying as that was, I don’t think me or Katie were too disheartened, we had just enjoyed our day out at the baseball. Next stop was St Patrick’s Cathedral and then climbing the Rockefeller at night because apparently there isn’t a view of NYC quite like that of the Rockefeller at night.

St Patrick’s was gorgeous and as it happened to be Palm Sunday when we went in we were able to see lots of people going in and out collecting their palms. I did pick one up but then realised it was $6 to have it shaped into a cross and also as we were headed home in a couple of days there was nowhere to store it. So I settled for taking a couple of pictures, taking a moment to think and enjoy the beautiful scenery and we were on our way again to top off this massively busy day by attempting to climb the Rockefeller. As you may have noticed from the title of this day…. We didn’t succeed.

We arrived around 10pm that evening at the doors our pass told us to go to and the lovely man at the door advised us that it wouldn’t be wise to go up that night as the air was white and you wouldn’t get the best view so come back tomorrow at the same time and he would make sure we got in quickly and see what we wanted to see. Seeing as we were up for a night out and hadn’t been able to get up the Rockefeller, we decided perhaps we should see the sights from high up and find a rooftop bar to sit in instead… cue our terrible navigation skills again. We wandered past the bar probably 3 times before we agreed that this was the door we needed to go in, walk up the corridor and enter a tiny and little bit creepy lift going up. When we walked out onto the rooftop, we expected to see New York staring back at us from above, but we didn’t see much at all. The roof was shut over and all we could see from where we were was the top of the Empire State and a tiny bit of Times Square. The cocktail we had however made it alllll better…. Despite it costing us $18 each!! Needless to say we had one then moved on to find somewhere slightly cheaper.

Day 4- Ground Zero, Shopping, Attempted cycling in Central Park and Rockefeller (Attempt 2).

We started Day 4 pretty early as again we had a lot we still wanted to do and only one more full day to do it in. Ground Zero was first on our list and we headed back on the subway (really good at that now!) making our way out at the Oculus- a big shopping mall right beside Ground Zero. After queuing in the relatively warm morning sun, we went inside what is now the Ground Zero museum.  If the outside, and 2 gaping holes where the Twin Towers once stood weren’t moving enough, the museum within brought it home for us. As you walked through the voices of people who witnessed the tragedy and were affected by it rung out. The walls in rooms were adorned with the faces and names of the people who lost their lives that day and the days following. All in all, it was beautifully poignant and demonstrated just what was lost that day, but also keeping the memory alive.

We wandered back to our hotel with our thoughts, and low and behold it began to absolutely pee down with rain. Now, we’re not one to back down from our plans, we’ve found our way off the train and all the way round London before just to get to a show/concert that we have had booked for ages. However, our next plan was to go cycling in Central Park. We made our way back out after changing into more suitable clothes for cycling and it was still hammering it down. Umbrellas back up, we began on our way… for about 20 metres then Katie’s umbrella blew the wrong way, mine just filtered water straight onto my shoes and we were practically soaked through. We then had a quick chat and decided we would attempt Central Park later and go shopping instead. Shopping was fun, we spent far too long in the HBO store (it’s amazing go, go go!!) and I got way too carried away buying presents for my fam back home. Lots of money spent, the rain having finally passed and dinner eaten we were ready to go back and take two with Central Park.

We took the scenic route there (my fault this time… sorry Katie) and eventually when we reached there we were immediately accosted by a man with a bike who wanted to take us on a ‘journey’ around the park on his bike. He would take us to all the sights and show us where Avengers was filmed and Friends etc… all in half an hour. We politely turned it down and headed for the kiosk to ‘rent’ our bikes. On the man’s bike as we passed it had a sign ‘$4 per 1 minute’- the man wanted us to pay $120 for a half an hour bike ride that we could walk around ourselves? No thank you! We queued forever to see the lady at the kiosk and as she looked at our NY passes, sighed and said we couldn’t get the bikes from her we’d need to go to a different entrance on the other side of the park. We’d walked so far that day that the bike ride no longer felt like a necessity, and instead we wandered down the path to a set of rocks to have a sit down and chill out. This is where I filled another of my goals for the holiday- handstanding in Central Park. Katie was ever the brilliant and patient photographer for that one- Thanks Katie!!

We then wandered a little more around Central Park and then found our way back to Times Square, literally a straight line from where we were, and a 5-minute walk, rather than the 20 it took us on the way… whoops. Back to Rockefeller we went and at the door, there was a different man, who wasn’t so lovely. he promptly told us the next entry wasn’t until 11pm or we could come back tomorrow. Left with no choice, we decided to grab some food and head back to the hotel for a more chilled evening than anticipated. It was time to pack and get ourselves ready to head home tomorrow afternoon.

Day 5- Central Park, and homewards.

Our final day in NYC and we used this time to just take one last wander down to Times Square for a few more photos and pick-up last-minute things for our trip home. We originally planned to go and have breakfast at Ellen’s Diner. However, we were still pretty full from dinner the night before, and as we had noticed the whole time we had been in New York, the queue was hugely long from very early in the morning. We then collected our bags from our room, took them into the deposit room and went to Central Park one last time where we sat for hours, chatting, eating our last GOT Oreos, that a woman in Walgreens had encouraged us quite enthusiastically to buy the night before, and sunbathing on the top of the rocks. A lovely chilled last morning in NYC.

The only thing left to do now was collect our bags from the hotel, call a taxi and head to the airport. The taxi was an interesting experience and one I’m not sure I would like to repeat again. Despite this, it gave us time to think and reflect on the incredible (and massively busy) time we had, had in New York and I think even before we left, we had already decided that one day we will return.

Thank you, New York and thank you Katie for being a really great travel partner and friend. We truly did have an amazing and unforgettable experience and will have stories to tell for the rest of our lives.

Here we are, the end of the New York blog! It took a while but we got there and I am grateful for those who have read this one, and have stuck around.

I am promising again that I won’t leave it so long again.

Sinead xxx