Long time no see, everyone! For the first week of August, I was on a vacation to New York City with my best friend. Unless I wanted to lug my laptop all the way there and back, blog posts had to wait. But I'm back now, and ready to share some highlights of my trip with you all! I had wanted to go to NYC for a long time, despite people around me making it very clear that they weren't fans of the city. I've always done my best to form my own opinion about things, and this was no different. The trip definitely had some bumps in the road, but I had a blast and took hundreds of photos! Here I'll show you all some of my highlights.
Surprisingly, I took most of my photos with my iPhone. I took my Canon with me, but I didn't like carrying it around all day and New York is so fast-paced that it's difficult to stop and get the perfect shot. You might have to excuse the quality of some of these, but I did the best I could! These photos represent my memories, and that's what matters.
Flying into the city was amazing. We were so lucky to have chosen to sit on the right side of the plane to see the skyline as we flew in to LaGuardia airport. The skyline is so iconic, and before seeing it with my own eyes I didn't understand quite how condensed the city was.
On our first full day in the city, we went to a Broadway show! We saw Phantom of the Opera and it was a great experience. I remember reading the story for school years ago, but I couldn't recall a lot of the plot before seeing the musical. Rediscovering it that way was was amazing, and the music was fantastic. After the show ended, we explored Times Square and the area around the theater. Times Square is absolute madness, it's a kind of crazy that everyone should experience once, and then never again because it is quite overwhelming.
Our second full day, we walked the Brooklyn Bridge in the morning. It was hot and crowded, but I was glad we did it when we did. We took the subway over to Brooklyn before walking back over, and then walked along the water near the Wall Street area. Then, we took the subway back further into the city and went to Central Park. We saw the Bethesda Fountain and the Sheep Meadow. I really liked Central Park, it's really amazing how it truly is a place to escape in the middle of such a busy city. I loved this shot of the meadow with the skyscrapers in the background.
The next day, we did our shopping for the trip in SOHO. We started at the Bite Lip Lab, where you can customize your own lipstick! I think it's worth the price to get a lipstick that is exactly what you want, especially if you wear it frequently! We also hit stores like Glossier, Muji, and Nike and Adidas outlets (just to see them). We also got around to trying macarons at Laduree New York and unique drinks at the Starbucks Reserve Roastery. For dinner, we got a New York classic, hot dogs :) These had sauerkraut and onions with ketchup and mustard.
This day was Sunday, we started our day at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and I loved it! It's huge and filled to the brim with art and artifacts from regions all over the world. We didn't get through half of it, but I would absolutely go back and see it all. Later that afternoon, we did something that I had been really looking forward to. It just so happened that this Sunday was five months from my 20th birthday exactly, and I had never really celebrated properly. Our dinner that night was afternoon tea at The Plaza hotel. It was a great experience for any tea lover and I highly recommend it as a place to celebrate special occasions in New York City.
The highlight of the next day was successfully making it in to watch a recording of The Tonight Show! Getting tickets is a process, they go online about a month in advance and you request to get on a wait list. Once on the wait list for the date you want, it's a waiting game. They'll email you if you have tickets, and silence is your answer if you don't. Both my friend and I requested two tickets, and we both got emails that we had tickets if we wanted them. One of us just declined because we only needed one set. If you can't get tickets through this process, you could always try the standby line but I'm unfamiliar with that process. Watching the show live was such a fun experience, the effort to get tickets is totally worth it!
On our last full day in the city, we went to Coney Island! We were veterans at navigating the subway at this point, and the journey was easy-peasy. I quite liked the cloudy weather, it wasn't too hot but I definitely walked away with some color from the sun. We chilled on the beach, walked the boardwalk, and got hot dogs and gelato! This day was a Tuesday, and I'd recommend going on a weekday to avoid crowds!
Getting home was quite the process, thanks to summer north-east weather. Our first flight out of LaGuardia was cancelled, and we rescheduled to a flight out of Newark the next day. The Newark flight sat on the runway for 5 hours waiting out weather, and we missed a connection we had in Chicago. Eventually, we made it to Chicago and managed to get a flight to Phoenix that night, stayed in the airport overnight, and then had one more flight home for early the next morning. That was definitely a travel experience I hadn't had before, so maybe consider the summer weather if you're planning a trip!
These are just my highlights, but if anyone would like an itinerary-style breakdown of what we did when, let me know! Planning for this trip was an experience itself, so if our experience can help someone else plan their trip, I'd love to help. A post of my general travel tips is coming soon, so keep an eye out for it! Thanks for reading,
xx, Hannah