new york things

I survived New York, broken foot and all!

I wasn’t able to update while we were gone because a) there was no free wifi at the hotel and I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay $70 for an essential service and b) too busy Doing Things to stop and write about them. We’re home now, so it’s time to play catch up.

Excluding travel time, we had four full days in New York to do whatever we wanted. I had a small but significant list of things I wanted to do, and we got through most of it – we’d have done more, but we were pretty seriously hampered by my broken bones. That being said, I was surprisingly mobile in that stupid boot, and it even came in handy several times.

In no particular order, here are the things we did:

Hung out in Times Square (which is really more of a rhombus) like gaping tourists, and quickly tired of dodging selfie sticks and people asking if we liked comedy
Went up the Empire State Building and took ten thousand pictures of a rainy New York at night
Thoroughly enjoyed the VIP experience at the ESB – seriously, we were fawned over. It was hilarious and expensive but I’m so glad I sprung for the no-lines pass.
Went to Rockerfeller Center and looked at it; ditto Radio City Music Hall
Snuck into the Metropolitan Museum of Art – we had stopped in to pee and look in the shops (museum shops are my favourite), and Ed found a back entrance into Egypt so we wandered around and saw awesome things. Normally I would feel bad about this, but the Met has a suggested donation of $25 per adult. You can pay less if you like, even if that isn’t acknowledged anywhere. And I spent more than that in the shop anyway, so it’s not like we saw art for free. It was just .. discounted.
Enjoyed street meat! I had the BEST HOT DOG EVER outside the Met.
Walked through Central Park multiple times! Our hotel was on the Upper West Side, just three blocks from the park. It was really nice out for park walkin’, and we hunted down a few statues I wanted to see. It’s very beautiful in there, and I named all the turtles I met. That is likely the reason our walks took a long time (as opposed to my slow hobbling), as there were a lot of turtles.
In addition to being close to the park, our hotel was also two blocks from a Shake Shack. Many shakes were shacked.
We walked half of Brooklyn Bridge and it was awesome
All the bus tours! Correctly guessing that I wouldn’t be able to walk as much as I normally do on vacation, I purchased 3-day bus tours for us. We did almost every tour (some more than once), including the boat cruise which was AMAZING. Neither of us had any idea how close it got to the Statue of Liberty and that it went under the Brooklyn Bridge, so we super enjoyed the cruise. The staff were fantastic, too – seeing that we were at the tail end of a full boatload and not wanting to have to stand at the railing with hundreds of others, they let Ed and I get on at the very start of the next sailing so we could snag railside seats at the front of the boat.
Someone suggested that we do the NBC Studio Tour, but we don’t really watch TV or have any kind of yearning for NBC programming. Instead, we paid to go to the top of Rockerfeller Center and marvel at the daytime views.
Due to my great distrust of stopovers in Toronto, we both traveled carry-on only. It was trying at times, and due to the lack of free space I decided not to visit the Nintendo Store. That will be saved for next time.
Many delicious meals with surprisingly sensible portion sizes, except for one meal that simply did not end (there were so many shrimp my stomach hurts just thinking about it)
The one yucky weather day was the day we decided to do the Empire State Building at 11pm, and it is cold as all heck when you are 86 floors above the city. I bought what I THOUGHT were leggings at Macy’s to protect my frosty box, but they turned out to be stupid pants instead. I wore one pair that evening, but returned them the next day. No pants for me, America. Nice try.
Took the night tour through Brooklyn, as narrated by a crazy man
Very briefly visited MoMA – they closed at 5:30 and we arrived after 4:30, so instead of paying $50USD to see art for an hour we looked at what wasn’t behind Art Guards and put it at the top of the list for next time
Ditto the Guggenheim – on my own I could spend days in museums, but they’re not Ed’s cup of tea (especially when they come with a giant price tag: we love you, London). Plus, they’re doing mega construction in the Guggenheim so half the place was closed off. Will go next time.