So here's my first ever blog post, eekkkk... ♡♡♡
Obviously for my first post I want to talk about the best city ever... NEW YORK CITY of course!!
as of today I have been to the city twice, so I've seen quite a fair amount of touristy spots. The first time I travelled there was Christmas 2017, much a magical time go be there. ✩⤹
I flew with British Airways, can't fault that company one bit! They were amazing. I absolutely love all things aviation so obviously this was a big deal for me, definitely recommend. It was my first long haul trip so in my eyes it was absolutely amazing being able to watch movies on the screen in front of me. 🙈 You also get your own blanket, pillow and earphones which I think is a nice touch. 😊
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As soon as we landed into JFK we were greeted with a hour long que at immigration, which is expected its a massive airport at the end of the day. Everything was plane sailing, until it came to getting a cab into Manhattan. This is where I wish I had done more research because you can easily get yourself into a bit of bother here.So we were searching for a yellow cab as we knew it would be $70 to out hotel, but we were greeted by a man claiming to be a taxi driver. he was quite persuasive and grabbed our bags and started taking us to some multi-storey car park, as soon as I saw the blacked out cars I immediately knew something was wrong and grabbed our bags and said no we want to go in a yellow cab. Long story short, we managed to find the yellow cabs and got to our hotel safely. 🚕
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So anyways that night we wandered to times square which took around 10 minutes, I don't think you ever forget the first time you set your eyes on Times Square. 🙈 Its so surreal! We stopped by Shake Shack for our tea. I got the chilli cheese dog with chilli cheese fries, and oh my god they're were absolutely amazing!! I'm rather gutted it was only a one time seasonal meal, please bring the chilli cheese back Shake Shack! 😪 Later on that evening we headed to the Empire State building, a free attraction with our passes. Remember that scene from Elf when Buddy walks into the Empire State Building for the first time, that's all I could picture when I walked in. It's just a shame I couldn't press the millions of buttons in the elevator. 😂
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Second day
On Monday we woke up early as we had tickets for the Statue of Liberty crown, I highly recommend going early and booking your tickets 6 month in advance. It's that popular! I think I paid about $21.50 each, it included the ferry across, crown and pedestal. Basically we had access to everything with this ticket. Looking at the crown from a distance you'd think it was massive inside wouldn't you? Well I'm sorry to say its not, its very cramped. Only a few people can be in there at a time, but it's still worth it. The view is amazing. We ended up spending a good few hours on the island, so we decided to head back to Manhattan and see some more sites. Since we ferry terminal is at the bottom we decided to see some sites down that way, like the freedom tower and the 9/11 memorial pools. Its sad imaging what happened that day in the same spots we were standing, the pain people went through. I'm so sorry to all those involved in that day, I can't imagine what it was actually like. After a wander around the pools we grabbed some tickets to the one world observatory, the winter wonderland edition. We paid $39 each, but you could easily book a table in the restaurant and have a couple drinks which would be the cheaper option.
Third day
Tuesdays weather wasn't the best, it was very cloudy and wouldn't stop raining but we had tickets booked for a helicopter tour around the city. I'd surprised my mam with these for her birthday, I can't remember how much I paid but I do know I bought them on Attraction ticket direct. We had a time selected for our flight but for some reason we kept getting pushed back, in my eyes they weren't all that organised. Although they did make up for this by giving us the jump seats, the best view in my eyes 🙈 This was our first time in a helicopter (and I swore my last 😭) my mam loved it, we saw everything. However I didn't love it as much, I think it was the weather to be honest. it was windy, rainy and cloudy so the helicopter had a bit of turbulence. I honestly would have thrown up if we hadn't landed when we did 😂
After I recovered from the flight we done some more site seeing, Brooklyn bridge, Dumbo, Financial district, bus tour of lower Manhattan, and then the one thing I had been dying to see... THE ROCKEFELLER TREE! 😁 The most magical part of NYC at Christmas 😍🎄Its absolutely heaving, but still absolutely amazing.
That night we headed to broadway to watch Wicked 🎭and wow wow wow!!!! The best performance I've ever watched, the main actresses were unreal and their voices... WOW! Since visiting, I've seen Wicked a couple times, nothing compares to seeing it on broadway. Those actresses can hit notes that no one else can. Highly recommend seeing something on broadway, you can get cheaper tickets the morning of the shows, but you have to stand it a long line pretty early in the day.
Fourth day
Nothing much site-seeing on Wednesday, we decided to use our pass to get the bus to Woodbury common. Spent quite a few hours shopping and spending way to much money on bags 🙈🙊 The shopping centre is huge, so many shops, definitely something for everyone. It takes about an hour to get there from port authority. That night we got tickets for the Dyker Heights Christmas tour, touring all the streets with the best (and I mean the best) Christmas decorations.
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Last full day
Our last full day in New York 😢 we wanted to make it as special as possible. What better way than to have breakfast at Tiffanys 💙 It had just opened a month or two before my trip so I was incredibly lucky to get reservations, I was literally going online every morning to fight for tickets 🙊 That was in 2017 so don't worry, it will have calmed down by now, I hope. After eyeing up all the pretty jewellery, we headed up to Central Park. Rented a couple bikes and biked around the whole park, amazing and quick way to see it.
Home time
Our flight home was at 20.40pm so we spent our final few hours at the Rockefeller centre, the views from the top of the rock are the best. Personally, I prefer the TOTR to any other skyscraper in New York. I like being able to see the Empire State building, I think it just adds something extra to photos.
If you're flying from JFK I would suggest leaving a good 1-2 hours before you need to check in, even more so if you're getting there by cab.
For more photos and tips follow me on instagram - @jetsetlyss
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