New York, New York

I started writing a post about 2 and a half months ago when we were in New York but unfortunately had untold problems trying to write it on my iPad. Either the blogger app is pretty useless or I am...or maybe a bit of both. Anyway here it is....

After months of planning and research we have finally started our holiday in New York. We left home at midnight on Monday (Dec 10) night and arrived lunch time Tuesday, which doesn't sound that bad, but in fact it was 27 hours of travel. Both flights were really good, we watched a few movies and slept as much as we could.

 We flew past Mt Fuji in Japan

We were lucky to arrive just before a flight from London so we got through immigration pretty quickly. Our first ride in a yellow taxi was pretty scary. The driver making his own lanes, tooting the horn, he seemed to be driving very fast...I couldn't see the speedo! He then dropped us off in the wrong street but there was so much traffic we just decided it would be easier just to walk around the block.

By the time we arrived at the hotel we were pretty shattered so we dropped our bags and headed out to grab a bite to eat before it got too dark. We managed to stay awake till about 6:30pm and slept the whole night.

That bed looked very inviting!

Too tired to get changed...poor love!

View from our room

Our first outing was to Macy's because we were freezing and both needed decent looking coats, because you can't walk around New York looking like dorks! Macy's was packed with Christmas shoppers and finding our way around was pretty hard. So many floors!! Trying to get someone to help was  pretty hard too...think they brought in extra staff for the pre-xmas shopping, but forgot to train them. Anyway we were pretty pleased with our purchases by the time we left...some hours later.

I am having no end of trouble trying to do this post, it's the first time I've tried doing it on my iPad and I need to use a blogger app, but am finding it really difficult to use and can't seem to get the photos where I want them. So I'm going back and forth from the little windows computer to the iPad and I may be going to give up very soon. We will see!!! (yeah I gave up!)

 

Times Square

 

The next day we visited the Rockefeller Centre and the skating rink. There was a bit of a line to get in to the centre but didn't have to wait long. We had read it was better to go to the Rockefeller Centre instead of going to the top of the Empire State Building as you get a better view of Central Park.
Something interesting we did see while we were there was a shoe shine shop....I didn't know they still existed! It was very popular with people lined up out the door. We were in a bit of a rush, hence no photo!

Rockefeller skating rink

The views from the top of the Rockefeller Centre were amazing!

View of Central Park one way....

Empire State the other

We walked from there down to Central Park and found some caches and dropped off quite a few trackables we bought with us from Australia. We also went and had a look at the Dakota building, where John Lennon lived and visited his memorial Strawberry Fields in Central Park.

The very beautiful Dakota Building

Strawberry Fields

Stephen - geocaching in Central Park

From there we walked all the way back to the hotel which was about 35 blocks (as they say in the US) and collapsed!

The next day we went down to the financial district where we were suppose to go to the crown of the Statue of Liberty but because of hurricane Sandy there was no access to the island so we just took the boat ride out to see the statue.

Damaged Jetty

Then we walked up to Wall St and searched for a couple of caches...

...and found the Charging Bull.

From there we went to the 9/11 memorial but didn't know that we needed to pre-book to get in so we just walked around the outside and saw the 'gap' where the two buildings had been and remembered and thought about how it would have been that day.

The next day was Saturday and we had pre-booked to go on a cruise around Manhattan Island.

While checking the weather out the window of our room we spotted lots of Santa's... and on the way to the dock we were walking with thousands of them, they were coming from everywhere. Apparently  it is world wide event called Santa Con, there is even one in Perth on the 22nd Dec. Just a day to get dressed up and have fun....but we'll leave that for the young ones!

The Little Red Lighthouse..made famous by Hildergarde Swift in the children's book The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge.

Chrysler Building

The cruise went for three hours and was very interesting until about the last half hour when we absolutely froze! Should have had our dorky coats on!!

On Sunday it was raining but that didn't stop us for the whole day. We went back to Bryant Park (we went there a couple of days ago) and did a bit of shopping and found the two geocaches we  missed earlier.

Stephen bought me a 1900 American silver dollar necklace...

I absolutley love it! (thank you my darling xx)

A couple of selfies taken at Bryant Park.

We decided it was our most favouite spot in New York City.

We also went and had a look at Grand Central Terminal.

A very beautiful old station.

The next day we were back shopping at Macy's, I haven't had much luck with trying to get what I want...which is a damn shame!

Anyway, we have had a fantastic time in New York, so glad we came.  I think it took a couple of days to get used to the crowds and the traffic but we'll worth coming.

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I'll finish this post here and start on the next part of the adventure in the next post. Hopefully it won't take as long.