Oh America.
We spent the last few days of this crazy adventure in NYC. I must say, I fall more in love with this city each and every time we come here. We’ve spent the last 35 days completely packing each day with all types of activities, we decided that a weekend in NYC would not only help us re-adjust to the U.S. time zones, but also give us a chance to just relax, catch up on sleep, and do just a few fun things during these lat few days. This will be our third trip to NYC, so we didn’t have to pack in a ton of things because we’ve pretty much covered all the major tourist activities. So, here’s a quick rundown of our last few days:
On Friday we flew from Iceland to NYC during sunset hours and seeing that from up above is an experience in itself. The highlight of that flight was going over Greenland, which is pretty remarkable from above. Once we landed in NYC, we navigated the public transit system to get us from JFK to our hotel in midtown (this was Matt’s decision, not mine. I’m a creature comfort person, so I would have paid an Uber an “Uber amount of money,” just so I didn’t have to pull around this crazy large (and heavy) luggage through the transit system on a Friday night. We grabbed dinner at this ridiculously great burger place (which was voted one of the best burgers in NYC, and it just happened to be in our hotel) and called it an early night.
We slept in just a bit on Saturday as we were adjusting from the 6 hour time difference we went from in Iceland, but then we headed out for the day to do a couple of different things we had on the agenda. We started the late morning off at Ellen’s Stardust Diner. If you haven’t gone, you must go the next time you are in NYC. So, the backstory on this place, they hire aspiring singers/dancers/actors, etc. as their waitstaff and as part of their job (and part of the experience at the restaurant) is that they all sing and perform all the time for the patrons eating while they are serving as their waiter/waitress. It was so super fun, as it was like being in a broadway show while eating breakfast! Once again we then navigated public transportation, which let me tell you, after being around the world in all these other cities, NYC needs to come up with a plan to re-do their subway system. It’s old, dirty, and terribly outdated. All the lines were screwed up this weekend for a variety of different reasons (maintenance, holiday schedule, cleaning, etc.), so getting anywhere took way longer than it should normally take. Regardless, we headed south to the financial district because I wanted to go to Ellis Island. See, Matt and I were here in 2002 and we went to the Statue of Liberty, but Ellis Island wasn’t open then, as it was under renovation, so we never got to go. The company contracted to run the tickets, security screening, and ferry transportation to Ellis Island/Statute of Liberty need to get some serious system implementation and quality assurance in place. We literally waited three hours (outside in the cold) to get to the island. This was a cluster, but the museum was fabulous once we were there. I could spend days in that place, as there is so much information there. We took the ferry back to lower manhattan and as we were doing that, the weather changed and the snow started coming down. By the time we made it back to Times Square the huge snowflakes were just beautiful and it was such a neat experience to see it with the snow. We’ve only ever been in the summer or fall, so this was a new experience for us. We grabbed some classic NY style pizza for dinner and started planning what our Sunday would entail.
So, the only other things I wanted to do while we were in NYC was to see another broadway show, got to Katz Delicatessen, and go to the 9/11 memorial museum. Sunday we headed south again the the lower east side to go to Katz for lunch. Although the pastrami sandwiches were amazing, the place was so packed that the seating situation made the experience a bit tight to say the least. People claim there are better sandwiches in other Jewish deli’s, so we’ll try those out next go around when we are in town, but it was good to check this known favorite off the list of things to try. We followed up lunch with a trip to the 9/11 memorial and museum. When Matt and I came in 2002, final clean up at Ground Zero had occurred a few months before, so there was just these massive holes in the ground where the buildings once sat. To come back this many years later and see this uniquely designed memorial was very moving. It’s really a beautiful tribute to all of those who lost their lives that day. It’s one of those things, similar to that of the OKC bombing, where the experience is forever etched into our minds of where we were and what we were doing on that tragic September morning. If you haven’t been, take the time to go to the museum as well. We spent several hours here and I could have spent at least 2-3 hours more here.
We headed back towards midtown where Matt could do the one main thing on his agenda for this destination, which was to go to Eleven Madison Park. This restaurant has been given the award as literally the best restaurant in the world. I mean, seems fitting right? Going to the best restaurant in the world after traveling around the entire world? Seems so to me. The service was fantastic, the drinks and dessert to die for, so long story short, we’re coming back here, no doubt. In our usual fashion, we got to talking to people sitting around us, having a good time and we didn’t leave on time for the show we had tickets to, so we had to rush a taxi to get us there. We literally made it to the theatre with just minutes to spare, maybe seconds to be exact. We went and saw Avenue Q (Matt wanted to see this, as he said it was supposed to be hilarious-and it was), which is currently playing off broadway, but definitely worth a go. I really wanted to see Hamilton, but in order to get tickets, you are looking at close to $400 (upward) for each ticket. Here’s the thing, I can by round trip airfare to see the show in a completely different city (it’s starting to tour now, and yes, I know it’s not the original cast, but the NY showing isn’t necessarily the original cast either) for what people wanted for these tickets. No thanks, I’ll wait for it to come around when the ticket prices have returned to at least semi-reasonable prices. We did a bit of shopping on Monday and began the final leg of the journey home.
A quick trip to NYC can boost the spirits of those who love this city. I’m glad we made the stop, as it allowed us to adjust our clocks a bit and spend a few days where every second of everyday didn’t have something planned in it. In the coming days, Matt will get pictures from the entire trip up (y’all we had to buy more SD cards for the camera, so get ready), and we will both do a couple of wrap up blog posts sharing our unique perspectives on the overall experience. This trip has been an incredible journey and I look forward to sharing my thoughts and experiences with you guys.
Until then, I leave you with a few photos from NYC.
Hope you all had a great holiday weekend!
