New York City Day One

We are back from our vacation!  We've been in New York City for the last week which was a great experience, although I think we both can safely say that we could never live there!  I thought that I would give a day by day synopsis of our trip over this next week, as it was a busy packed week and I'm sure we won't be able to remember or tell everyone what we did in one shot!

Day One:
We left Ottawa around 7am on October 19th.  We made it to the border within an hour and a half and go through with no problems.  We made our first pit stop around 11am, then again for gas around noon and around 1pm for lunch (which I packed before we left to save some money). Probably my favourite thing about this drive was as we were coming into Scranton PA, we passed a Cornell U coach bus, which for all the Office fans out there, was Andy's alma mater. :)

We got a few pictures along the drive in Pennsylvania, as the trees were still full with their leaves, plus the hills just made it so nice.  Here are a few pictures, they aren't the best since I took them while we were driving.

We got into New York City around 3pm, we had a great view of the Manhattan skyline as we were coming in through New Jersey.  I took a few pictures, but the camera was not co-operating very well and I had to help John figure out where we needed to go, but this one picture turned out really well.

It was a little insane getting into the city.  We took the Lincoln Tunnel, which was cool, but then John started commenting on how it would suck if there was an accident while we were in there and how you'd be stuck for hours and I started to feel a little claustrophobic and started thinking about the tunnel breaking and the water coming in.....luckily it was a quick drive in and we were out in no time with no troubles at all!

Once we got into Manhattan, we were right on the edge of the Theater District, in the middle of the madness of people and cars everywhere AND the GPS decided to stop helping us, as our little X-Wing Fighter icon was putting us in the middle of buildings.  I quickly got John's phone out and navigated us through the one way streets to our hotel, where John quickly decided we would be valet parking our car instead of trying to figure out where the parking building was!

We got checked in and went up to our room and drop our bags off.  When I opened the door to the room, John just stood in the hallway and when I asked him if he was coming in, he asked where the rest of our room was!  Haha, he's too used to traveling for work where he gets half decent rooms from Hilton or Marriott, not something downtown Manhattan, right in Times Square.  We took a couple pictures to give an idea of what we had...

Our bed took up most of the room.

The closet and cabinet with shelves, a draw and the mini bar.

The bathroom.

Once I got John in the room, I unpacked and put everything away while he came to terms with the room. :)  When we were all settled, we decided that we would hit the town and explore a little bit before getting some dinner.

Our hotel was right in Times Square, so we started there.  It was crazy the lights, billboards, people, cars, honking....it was a lot to take in all at once!  It was just as we had seen on T.V. and in movies, so it was really cool to see it in person.  It took a bit to get used to all the people and cars all over the place, we Canadians are too nice and polite, but John got the hang of it pretty quick, so I just followed him!

Our first stop was into the Disney store as it was two stories and I just love the Disney store!  I bought my sister's Christmas present, along with her souvenir and our nephew's souvenir.  All I can say is that it was a good thing John was with me to restrain me, or else I could have bought half the store!!

I never realized that they left the New Years Eve ball up all year long.  John and I had a bit of a debate as we went into the Times Square museum and saw a ball there, which I thought was THE ball, he did not.  Turns out he was correct!  We didn't notice the ball and year until after we came out and looked down the street the other way!  Just shows how much there was to see!!

We made our way up 7th Ave into Central Park, where we walked about a quarter of the way in, but ended up coming back as we were both tired and it was about a 10 block walk to get to the park already.  We decided to come back and have supper, at T.G.I. Friday's and then headed back to the hotel as we were exhausted and decided that we would go to bed early to start the day early!

That's it for Day One of the trip. It was a pretty tiring and packed day, even though most of it was driving. Stay tuned for tomorrow's blog!