New York Travel Journal Part 1

People who have been following me on Instagram lately knew that I was heading off to New York for a few days. The time has flown so fast and I am already back in the country a few days now. It took me a while to adjust to the time difference again. Hello Jetlag! I am still tired now. Let me tell you first of all, if you haven’t been to New York yet, now is the time to book your flight and go. I have been to New York twice before but more for work, for that reason I have seen the Subway more than the streets.

Thursday 3rd March was the day. In the morning hubby dropped the kids off to creche while I was packing the rest of my suitcase. I said my goodbyes to them before they left of course.
My flight was not departing Dublin airport until 3.50pm but it was advised to be at the airport 3 hours prior to departure because of the US clearance and all. So I drove to Dublin at 10,30am and arrived in the car park at Dublin airport at 1pm. Plenty of time. The flight was 7 hours long.
I killed the time by watching 3 movies. The time difference was a bit of a killer because it meant I arrived at 11pm Irish time and by the time we got to the hotel it was 3 am I think. It took so long because I arrived at Terminal 5 whereas my bestie Karo arrived at Terminal 8. I didn’t think at the time that we could arrive at 2 different Terminals as the last time I’ve been we always arrived at the same Terminal. I guess they must have changed things around in the last 4 years. There have been some complications with the hotel and my pre authorisation payment before I left the country but luckily while we were in New York it all cleared itself.
We made our way to the hotel by taking the Subway. Our hotel was called Hampton Inn and was located on the 34th Street just around the corner from the Empire State Building Great location, as we figured out 2 days later that it is only a walking distance from Times Square. We walked a lot to save money on the Subway.

Friday 4th March, after catching up on some sleep overnight we adjusted to the time change pretty well and weren’t jetlagged too much. Breakfast was served daily from 6am to 10am so we were hoping to sleep in until at least 9 am so we can still make breakfast. With the kids getting up between 7 and 8 am, time change or not, I seem to be programmed to get up at that time so I woke at 7.30am already.
The breakfast is something you really have to get used to. Continental in America and Europe is slightly different. We had the choices of Oatmeal Porridge, Bagels, Muffins, Yoghurts, toast, scrambled egg, some sort of sausages and waffles. The waffles were pretty cool. You could make your own waffles by pouring in the mix into the waffle maker and when it was done, it beeped.

Cutlery and plates was all paper but I suppose that was a way of them saving to wash it all. You have to think about the amount of people. There was 20 floors and each floor had around 6 rooms. I really liked the coffee. Generally I only have one coffee in the morning but here I had to have two. Purely because of these cups. Check out the cool cup holder even.

Our first day in New York we had snow. It was absolutely freezing and cold winds. Not a great day to explore the city but we did our best, wrapped up warm and walked to Rockefeller Centre which was 14 streets away. It sounds a lot but honestly, each street is like 2-4 mins walk. While waiting on the Lego store to open, we walked over to take photos of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the Atlas statue and ice rink at Rockefeller Centre.

We then walked to Times Square which was only around the corner. First stop was the M&M store. They got so many different new flavours that I got a bag with a bit of everything in it. Strawberry Cheesecake, Chilli nuts, Honey nuts, etc. As you can probably imagine they are nearly all gone now. I got a bag for my two boys, too.

Once all refilled with M&M’s and having a picture taken with the M&M man himself, we’ve done some exploring around Times Squares which included the Disney store, clothes shops like H&M and New York Gift shops. Basically the first day was all about spending money. We were going a bit easier on the money the coming days then.

We refilled our tummy in an Irish Pub around the corner from our hotel. Karo had some Shepard’s Pie while I had a delicious burger with steak fries. A bit of relaxing was in order in our hotel room before we went off again to Times Square to see the Hard Rock Cafe.

Everyone seems to come out of their rabbit holes in the evening time. The place was absolutely packed.

To be continued…