Kirstie's Travel Diaries #3 - Lost In New York

Catch up with #2 here.

DAY 4 (03/03/12)

This was a Saturday, after falling asleep in seconds the night before from being so exhausted, we woke up at around 8am feeling funky, fresh and ready for another exciting day in New York. After both getting ready it was around 10:30am and we decided to set off to somewhere we both had high on our list of places to see, central park. We made sure we wrapped up extra warm as we had been so so cold the day before and started towards Times Square as we knew eventually if we followed that road we would end up at the park.

 Once we arrived at Times Square we thought it was the perfect opportunity to get a quick bite to eat to fill us up for the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon (you will get to learn quickly that our eating habits on this trip weren't great) and even though it was early we headed for that golden M, hello chicken nuggets.
Chicken, fries and 20 sachets of mayo later we headed in the direction of the park. Even walking through the streets of New York is exciting  you are always noticing something different and the feel and pace of everything is always so quick and vibrant. 
When we approached the park it was obvious that we were tourists so... queue the tour guides. Every 2 seconds we were approached by someone who wanted to sell us a "fantastic, unique CHEAP"  tour of the park in one of those little bike/carriage things... I forget what they are called!

We actually decided against this and set off on foot alone into Central Park. Now... Central Park is BIG and I mean huge. It is 840.01 acres and it feels ten times bigger than that! 
After walking for about 45mintues we had seen so many places we recognised from TV/Films and it was all so fancinsating and beautiful BUT we had come to one resounding conclusion, we were lost. Seriously lost. 
There are lots of people in Central Park BUT nine times out of ten they are either running or tourists aswell and as we couldn't bring ourselves to ask someone who was running (way too awkward) we carried on walking hoping to find someone who looked helpful.
We had decided that we wanted to go to the zoo and we'd seen a few maps around the park but we didn't seem to be getting any closer to it! Eventually we found a police officer who kindly gave us our own personal map and told us that actually we had already gone past the zoo (of course). So we decided that the best thing to do was to head back to the main road and walk down the side of Central Park on the street until we found the zoo and thank god - it worked.

A short walk later and we were there, Central Park Zoo. We went straight in, got our tickets and had our cameras at the ready. 
First place we went to was the seal enclousre, which is actually a really pleaseant open area! We stayed here for so long becuase they were just so entertaining, jumping out of the water, coming right up and out of the sides, climbing around - they were definitely putting on a show. We had a favourite who had one eye, he/she was hilarious and we took so many photos!

We then headed over to the polar bear and wow. Such a beautiful animal and even though she (I think it was a she) was just sleeping and relaxing you could watch her for hours! There were a few view points and there is one down a flight of stairs which gets you level with the water that is in the enclousure which gave us an amazing view (hence the photos). If you were ever to go there when they are in the water I bet it is incredible. 

Now central park zoo isn't like it looks in the movie Madagascar and it isn't actually that large, so after checking out the rest of the pens and enclosures (I loved the penguins) we thought it was a good time to head out back into the city and check out some of the shops we had wanted to see. If the Zoo is on your list of things to do I would still definitely go just don't base a large portion of your day around it.

Not far from Central Park we found fifth avenue and along with that FAO schwarz. This huge toy store is known for it's 'big piano' and with it being up there with my 'things to see in New York' we headed on in. Well I am a huge big kid anyway so this store was just a playground - so much fun and some truly awesome things such as wizard of oz and harry potter barbies and huge lego statues. When we got to the big piano it was of course full of children and I didn't really fancy queuing up with them all and looking like a crazy woman so I just got a few photos.

After this we headed outside and spotted the amazing building which is the Apple store. If you haven't seen it before it is a huge clear cube on the street and the store is actually underground. You go into the cube and either take the stairs or a lift to the store below. Now obviously we weren't going to be buying anything from apple (we were on a budget here people and where am I going to pack a mac?) but we had a quick look around anyway - we couldn't not.

Now it was time for a bit of girly time and after popping into the Ugg store (my feet we freezing in Converse and I was seriously considering buying some) we walked over to the world famous Bloomingdales.
  Our mission for this store was to find the iconic 'brown bag' and after going to probably every floor we found them. I got the 'little brown cosmetic bag' and my friend got the 'little brown bag'. Bloomingdales is fab to look around BUT I'm really not a fan of people trying to sell me things, I know they are on commission but people that come up and start smearing things all over your hands and basically saying you have to buy the product - no. just no. 

A few little stores later and we decided that we wanted to head back to Times Square and check out a few of the stores we had seen there. We knew we were quite a walk away and were starting to get a little tired so we hailed a taxi and were there in minutes. We went to Sephora and Mac and both had a little shopping spree. 
The main thing I wanted to get at the time was Taylor Swift's perfume Wonderstruck as it wasn't available in the UK yet. So I headed straight for perfume section in Sephora and found it and then we both got the Viva Glam Nicki lipstick from Mac which at the time was brand new so we found that very exciting. 

We walked back to out hotel,which like I said before is about a 15/20minute walk straight down from Times Square,  grabbed a slice of pizza for dinner and went and had an early night because we knew that Sunday morning was going to be an early one.
 We were off on a day trip to Washington DC!!

NEXT POST - We head to Washington DC to see The White House, Ab Lincoln Memorial, Madame Tussauds, The Smithsonian museum and so much more....

Kirstie's Travel Diaries #2 - A Sightseers Heaven

Catch up with Day's 1 & 2 here.

DAY 3 (02/03/12)

So this was our first morning waking up in America and it was a bloody early one! With our body clocks being 5 hours ahead we were up and wide awake at around 6am (aka 11am!) so up and ready we got and we wrapped up seriously warm because it was actually so much colder than we were expecting!
Luckily we had both worn big thick hoodies from Jack Wills & Hollister for the flight - little did we know they were going to turn out to be life savers on this trip. We knew the first thing we wanted to do was to head to DASH (The Kardashian's Store in Soho) so once again the iPhone was out we had our map telling us which way to head.
After around 30minutes of walking we found it tucked away a few stores down from Chanel on Spring St.. What we hadn't realised is that stores open a bit later in this part of town and DASH didn't open until 11am so instead of waiting around we took a few photos outside and vowed to go back before we left the city so we could have a look round and get some merchandise! 

Next stop was The Statue Of Liberty (yup, today was going to be a sight-seers heaven) so we hailed a taxi, which is always awkward when you first get to NY but I'd like to say we are now experts, and we were on our way. 
Before we headed over and got our tickets we decided that we needed some breakfast, we saw a little supermarket type shop and thought we'd try out luck. Well this had everything - including a cafe area upstairs to go and eat your purchases! I settled for a chocolate chip pancake (hey I was in New York) and it was huge!! This is the first time I thought to myself their portions are huge and it wouldn't be the last!
Breakfast eaten, a little bit warmer and with a few snacks bought we headed over the road and towards the ticket office. 

The queue for The Statue Of Liberty was pretty big but with all sorts of people waiting from all over the world it was quite a good location for people watching. Although saying this this didn't make me feel any warmer and I was so grateful that I had packed my mittens that morning! After about an hour we were in, getting our bags checked and heading towards the boat.
Living on an island I am very used to ferries and this one just felt like I was at home. Growing closer and closer I was getting more and more excited, my friend had been before but this didn't make her any less excited as I. We hopped off the ferry and followed the crowds for a walk around Liberty! This was a perfect spot for photo taking and you'll get to learn from reading these posts that I do tend/love to get a bit snap happy - but I see nothing wrong with this when making memories! You can see the skyline of the city across the water and of course you are up close and personal with The Statue!

We stayed here for probably around half an hour but the wind was so icy cold that we had a quick look around the gift shop, took photos with stupid hat/masks on and walked back to the ferry. Next stop on the ferry was Ellis Island but we decided to skip this as we had lots planned for this day.

We got off the ferry and were greeted with street performers, these awesome guys doing some amazing dancing and gymnastics and had a massive crowd around them. after watching them for a little while we ventured off and went to ask for directions for Ground Zero.
We thought we would have to get a taxi there but after talking to a lovely traffic warden (I think thats what he was anyway) he kindly pointed out to us that "that is the freedom tower right there". We weren't far from it at all so we were off on foot and heading towards the 9/11 site. 
I always knew it was be eerie and even standing in the queue you could just feel that everyone around us felt the same. As we were in New York is was something at the top of our list of things to do and I am so so glad we went. Obviously security, like a lot of the landmarks/tourist attractions, is tight and again we went through the metal detectors and bag searches just like at the Statue of Liberty. 
We went to ground zero just before the museum had opened so it was just the water fall fountains there at this point. 
They are incredible and the size of them just really does make it hit-home how big these buildings were and how many people's lives this affected.
Ground Zero isn't somewhere you hang around for a long time and after a little while we made our way back out and into the store which is situated by the exit.

Now like I said before, this was a major sight-seeing day so yeah you guessed it next stop for us was The Empire State Building.
We got a taxi from Ground Zero and I can't quite remember how long it took but I can't imagine it was long! We were nervous that we were going to have to queue for ages but that wasn't a queue in sight so up we went. 
A fairly expensive ticket and 86 floors in a lift (elevator) later and we were at the top... and getting probably the most wind swept I've ever been in my life. What an AMAZING view. You really get to see the beauty and uniqueness of New York and I could of spent ages up there. But with the cold weather and time ticking on we decided to head back down and make our way back to our hotel.
As easy as that sounds we managed to totally and utterly balls it up. We went to a store and got some food for our room back at the hotel and some well needed bottles of water. As we started making our way back to the hotel location we started to noticed that actually we had no idea where we were going. And... I may, MAY, have made a teeny tiny mistake in thinking our hotel was on 152nd when actually it was on 125th (or something like that) so after walking around 52 blocks more than needed and spending some of our trek in a part of New York I would never want to go back again to we made it back to the hotel. Baring in mind we had been up since around 6, and just carried 24 bottles of water alot further than needed, we were exhausted but our day wasn't over.

When planning this trip we made sure we had tickets for a few things while we were in each state. Tonight we had some of those tickets and they were for Spiderman : Turn Off The Dark the musical on Broadway.
Luckily Broadway was only around a 15 minute or so walk from our hotel and we had seen where the theatre was the night we had arrived and gone to Times Square so we knew where we were going.
Our seats were right at the back of the circle but this didn't matter at all - The musical was amazing. If you are in New York and wondering what show to go and see I would definitely recommended it! Where else are you going to have Spiderman running out of the door right next to you and jumping off of the balcony. So so brilliant, modern and unique with an amazing cast, storyline, soundtrack and set. (I've even got the CD and love singing along).

We left Broadway and it was chucking it down with rain but instead of trying to hail a taxi with the hundreds of other people around we decided just to go for it and walk as fast as we could. And that was our first full day in New York done and dusted.

NEXT POST - Seals, Polar Bears, Central Park & a spot of shopping.....

Kirstie's Travel Diaries #1 - The Start

So these are post's I've been thinking about doing for a while. I went travelling around America last year and have decided to take you on a day-by-day guide of my trip! I'll probably be uploading these once or twice a week and  you can look forward to hearing about New York, Washington DC, LA, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Florida some more New York and everything in between each post will contain a day or two worth of photos, memories and thoughts! Get ready for landmarks, hilarious situations and a few celebrity guests.............

DAY 1 (29/02/12 )

This was 29/02/12 (Yup! Leap Year) it was a Wednesday and me and my best friend (that is who I went on this crazy journey with by the way so you are going to get to know her pretty well!) left our homes and hopped on a boat... yeah that happens.... and took ourselves off to the coach station. Our coach, of course, was late and we started to get chatting to a lady who we thought was wearing some form of slippers - she was off to Thailand on her own, brave.

 Coach turns up and we bundle on and get the awesome seats with the extra leg room near the front! Headphones in and excitement building we were there in no time, Hello Heathrow. Now our flight wasn't until the Thursday so we'd booked the travel lodge at Terminal 5, which by the way was super cheap for 1 night. After alot of wandering around and question asking to anyone in a high viz jacket we managed to get ourselves (and ridiculous amount of luggage) onto a bus and get ourselves to the Travel lodge. Bags in room and tummy's rumbling it was time for dinner. Fish & Chips was the choice, bye bye England (who were actually playing football live at the time of eating this) and then it was off to sleep our last night in England for a while. Although before this we had to watch the last in the series of TOWIE...duh!


DAY 2 (01/03/12)

The day had come, we were up, out and in Heathrow before we knew it and after some luggage issues (someone had a heavy suitcase and that someone wasn't me!) we were through security and in a weather spoons having breakfast. By the way I haven't mentioned yet that we are flying to New York JFK. At this point this would have been the longest flight I had ever been on and the biggest plane , I'd only ever been to Europe before, so my nerves has started. I'm not scared of flying at all I think it was just the thought of being stuck on there for 8hours. Our boarding gate wasn't announced til about 30mins or so before our flight so getting there was a panic and rush but we made it and then it was time to get on the plane. 

We'd boooked our seats online and from the looks on the picture we were in a row of 2, just us 2, cosy. We were wrong. We were the window and middle seats and blocked in by a stranger and I hate this. But this stranger turned out to be a guy called Jimmy who was off to New York for his sisters 21st, we had 8 hours together so we got to chat to him quite a bit - Hey Jimmy! So after 8 hours, a few attempted films, a few random conversations and a few photos - we were there. 
We were in New York and the excitement had started before we had even left the plane, we had to circle to airport for a bit while Airforce 1 landed in front of us with from what we were told OBAMA on the plane. Amazing start we have just landed and so had the president! 
Now it was the point where you need someone to let you in the country, this didn't take too long and was pretty friendly and easy (minus the fact it was about 50degrees I swear) and I was just excited about getting my first ever stamp in my passport. 

Yellow taxi virginity taken and around 30minutes later I was gobsmacked. The first time you drive towards the skyline of New York is incredible and it really had hit me that I was there and living the dream.
Our hotel was a Holiday Inn about a 10minute walk from Times Square so once we were there, and had sorted out some tax payments that we had no clue about and kind of just agreed and handed over the cash, we decided that we'd make the most of evening we had left. Our flight had left England around 1pm, took 8 hours so in our heads in was 9pm but in NYC reality it was only 4pm when we landed.
It was now probably around 7ish and I, like any tech-savvy twenty-something, got up my iPhone and it's maps (LIFE SAVER) up and worked out where we were and how to get to the iconic Times Square. 

 'WOW' Is all I could think, Times Square at night is such an incredible sight and I hadn't even been in America for a few hours and I was already having the best time of my life. On the way we had past so much and were already getting a feel for the atmosphere of NYC. Madison Square Garden, police on horses, crazy traffic, it was awesome.
 Photos taken, excited squeals squealed and a massive macdonalds later and we were exhausted so decided to head back to the hotel and chill for a bit, we knew whatever happened that we would be waking really early the next day so we thought we might aswell take advantage of it and get up and do as much as possible.

Next post - The busiest city day, sightseeing, taxi riding & Broadway show watching.