Four States, One Big Adventure: Day 1 - The Day Matt Faceplanted The Streets of New York

[NatsyNoo]

By popular demand (which I can’t believe…thanks to everyone who has shown an interest in reading about our trip!), it’s time to kick off the trippie!

We’ve been back for 1 week already which has flown by, I’ve made a start on sorting the photos, so it’s time to kick this report off!

If anyone is interested in reading the highs and lows, they can be found here



I’m not writing up a specific pre-travel day as it couldn’t have been any more boring if you tried. Essentially, we worked until 4pm ish, went home, got changed, and a taxi picked us up at 5.30pm to take us to the station. We caught a National Express coach up to Heathrow which took 1 hour 45 minutes, and on the coach, we had a little picnic that Matt had picked up from work at lunchtime that day. Once at Heathrow, we caught the Hoppa bus to the Travelodge where we were staying overnight. This cost £5 each. We didn’t arrive until gone 8pm which is the reason we didn’t book anything more luxurious. At £19, this more than did the job. Once in the room, we showered and got the bits and pieces out that we would need tomorrow before watching Joanna Lumley’s Japan in bed and trying to get to sleep as early as possible as we had an early start and a long day tomorrow.





Anyway, back to our proper travel day!

The alarm went off at 5am but we had been awake for a little while before that. Combination of other people heading off for their early flights so chatting in the corridor, and excitement. The previous night, I had booked a taxi from the hotel to T3 for 5.30am and that turned up bang on time. It didn’t take too long and it cost £14 which we felt was a fair price for the distance it felt that we travelled.

Bag drop and security were seamless for a change, so we were quickly through to the departures lounge for a mooch around the shops and some breakfast…or so we thought. We hadn’t even made it through the duty free shop when the fire alarms went off and we were evacuated. We were escorted out of some doors near the shop down a long corridor to some departure gates and when we got there, it wasn’t clear where we were supposed to go. There were no marshals around and there wasn’t actually an alarm going off. We stood around for 10 minutes or so when others started getting a bit restless and were heading back towards the lounge so we decided to follow suit. When we got there, the alarm was still going off but we were assured it had been a false alarm so we could go back in. So we did exactly that.

We had a little wander around the shops, but for anyone who is familiar with Heathrow T3, it’s not exactly exciting in terms of shopping because it’s all really expensive shops, e.g. Tiffany’s, Hermes. Not exactly within my price range…well, not after booking this holiday anyway!

We opted for EAT for breakfast. We weren’t all that struck by the sit down options and decided this would do the job. Matt had a bacon roll and orange juice. I had a granola and chocolate croissant (which I didn’t eat much of actually as it didn’t taste all that fresh) with an orange juice. This came to £10.57. Next, we popped to Boots for some drinks for the flight and a pack of mints, which came to £3.27.



We had a bit of time until our gate would be called so we sat in the lounge for a while looking online and people watching but we were eventually called, we boarded and our flight took off on time, all fairly uneventfully.



Plane selfie!



Soon after we took off, the cabin crew brought around the menus and the options were chilli & wedges (Matt’s choice) or teriyaki chicken (my choice) but when they came, the chilli was all gone so Matt had to have the chicken with me.



He wasn’t happy because he doesn’t like it, apparently. Hold that thought for later in this report. The meals were served with a Gu white chocolate and raspberry pots which were an absolute delight.





Matt passed the flight by watching Deadpool, Ninja Turtles and Captain America Civil War, and I watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2, read and slept a little.



Later in the flight, we were offered Fab ice lollies (which we declined), and afternoon tea was served which was a cheese & pickle sandwich, crisps, a chocolate and some mints. We didn’t eat much of this.



We landed at 11.45am local time which was as planned. We had been a little early but were forced to circle until our assigned time. We then faced an enormous queue at immigration which took 90 minutes to clear. We had landed behind a flight from Korea and Netherlands. It’s a shame that immigration don’t open all of the desks during busy periods, there’s just no need for these queues, but they only had about 6 desks open out of about 30. The Korean nationals were taking quite a long time to process, presumably due to additional visa requirements. They were certainly being thoroughly scrutinised.

Once our baggage was safely in hand, we headed off to catch the subway into the city. I had read up on this in a lot of detail and knew it should be a simple thing to do. If only that had been the case…

We had planned to catch the Air Train to Jamaica and then the E line to Court Square from which our hotel was an 8 minute walk. The Air Train portion was absolutely fine. We then hopped on the E line and were pleased with how it was going. However, I had been tracking the stations and noticed we seemed to go off course. After a handful of stations not matching my expectations, I thought it would be best to ask a local as we were going north which was the wrong direction for us. They told us that the E line had been rerouted to the F line at the weekend. We had missed the posters and just followed the signposts. They suggested we get off the train at the next stop and catch the M train (which was just the other side of the platform) instead. Easy peasy, we thought. Or it would have been if it had been running. But it wasn’t at weekends. So we were in a subway station, 2 stories down, no phone signal, 2 suitcases, 2 cabin cases, a camera bag and a handbag, not knowing where we were going or even where we were. I decided to run upstairs to get some phone signal and recalculate our route on the app which said that the 7 line (which was thankfully at this station) would get us there (provided it was running, of course). I ran back down to Matt, we grabbed the cases, and went up the three flights of steps to the 7 line platform. Only to find we were on the wrong direction platform, so needed to go back down and change sides. I mean you can imagine my mood by now. I was tired, fed up, peed off, all things bad really. Anyway, thankfully the 7 was running on the correct route and would get us to our hotel.

We were finally back on track and were thrilled when we could finally get downstairs and walk to our hotel which was fairly closed by. We were on the final stretch of the walk with one more block to go to our hotel when we came upon some uneven paving. Uneven doesn’t really describe it really. If it was in this country, the pavement would have been closed off. It was really bad. But anyway, we kept going when I felt a big tug on my arm and then found Matt on the floor behind me. One of the cases had got caught on one of the slabs, he went flying, and rugby tackled my cabin case (my beautiful Ted Baker cabin case) to the ground. Thankfully, he hadn’t face planted, his glasses were still intact and nothing was broken, but his knee was fairly badly grazed. This was just the cherry on the cream on the cake and I wanted to go home. If the hotel hadn’t been around the corner, I would almost certainly have called a taxi to take us back to the airport and take us home. Anyway, Matt was a trooper and we kept going and finally reached the hotel.

We checked in and by some miracle, our room was ready, so we took our luggage up to the room, changed and freshened up and just took a moment to calm ourselves down a little bit as our rage had reached Empire State levels. I texted home and explained what had happened and my sister replied and reminded me how long and hard we had planned and saved for this holiday so we should just get out there and enjoy it. Knowing she was right, we picked ourselves back up ready to do exactly that.



We left the hotel at 3.40pm, about 2 hours later than I had hoped to. It was raining, we had already waited for 10 minutes for it to stop but we couldn’t really afford to wait any longer so we decided to go for it. As it happened, it wasn’t very heavy and it was warm so didn’t really affect us too much.

This was our first view when we came out of the station in Manhattan. This made the trip worthwhite. Chrysler Building is my favourite building in all of New York, I just love it!



The original plan had been to head up to Central Park first and work south, but we didn’t really have time now so I flipped the plan around and worked with the subway. We would be getting the 7 to Grand Central so we worked from there upwards.











After a little walk around Grand Central terminal (which is stunning by the way), and a play in the whispering walls (which Matt didn’t know about so was a big surprise for him), we grabbed a snack from the station. We didn’t want anything too heavy as we had dinner at 8.30pm so Matt went for a milkshake from Jacques Torres and I had ordered a smoothie only to learn that they had run out of orange juice (we were just not having much luck so far!) so I skipped and just had a water. I wasn’t that hungry anyway. This came to $9.25.

We walked from the station to New York Public Library to see the Winnie the Pooh exhibit. I loved this. As such a big Disney fan, of which Winnie the Pooh is amongst my favourites, seeing the originals that AA Milne based the books on was such a massive privilege. I was so happy that I had read about this.























Matt was happy to see a Clifford too!



From there, we walked uptown, catching the sights as we did so



Saks 5th Avenue



Rockefeller Center – we didn’t go inside today





St Patrick’s Cathedral – we didn’t realise that the 9/11 memorial parade was going on, which had meant that 5th Avenue was closed to traffic which presented a unique opportunity to walk down the middle with no traffic. Anyway, the parade was very moving and powerful









Radio City Music Hall



Trump Tower





Tiffany’s – we did wander around and Matt offered to buy me something but I do have quite a lot of Tiffany jewellery and there wasn’t anything in there that I spotted so we agreed to wait to see if there was anything else later in the trip that he could treat me to



Next stop was Bloomingdales where we bought my mum a Little Brown Bag. In fairness, she had asked for it. This was around $23 which included some kind of international visitors’ discount that I was given. I lost the receipt for this so can’t share the exact cost, unfortunately.



We then visited Dylan’s Candy Store and Serendipity 3





I saw this inside Dylan’s – gave me a chuckle!



By this time, we were thirsty again so grabbed a couple of drinks from a cart man. I got a Snapple (amazing, a new favourite!) and Matt got a Coke Zero. These came to $7. We didn’t buy any more drinks from cart-men haha.





After this, we decided to head back down towards Times Square. We did so via the south of Central Park (without going inside) so we saw The Plaza



We also passed the LOVE sculpture

[NatsyNoo]

By now it was 6.30pm, so we headed straight to Times Square for a mooch before our reservations at 8.30pm. We saw the red steps, M&Ms Store and Disney Store.













I had a field day in Disney Store. I bought my baby niece Molly the Belle baby suit/dress, the Jessie baby suit/dress and a Nemo vest which was in the sale, for $44.89, and then a Liberty Minnie plush and Vinylmation and the reusable shopper bag for $51.01. I saw a tshirt that I fancied but I don’t normally go for grey so I didn’t get it and thought I’d ponder on it.



The escalator in here was gorgeous…Tangled themed



By 8pm, we decided to head to the restaurant early. We were not enjoying the crowds at all. The restaurant, Tony’s Di Napoli, were able to seat us more or less straight away, so I texted my friend Pauline who were meeting there to see if she could come earlier. She arrived about 10 minutes later.

We ordered the fettuccine alfredo and chicken parmigiana to share between us (food is shared family style) with 3 soft drinks which came to $28 each including tip. Very reasonable for the portion sizes and quality of the food. It was a lovely meal but the noise levels in the restaurant really bothered me. This became a theme during our entire NYC stay.





Our next and final stop was the Empire State Building. We had limited time in NYC so the only way we could be sure to manage both ESB and TOTR was to do one tonight. We were still fairly awake so it wasn’t too problematic. Pauline was supposed to join us but she was tired from a busy day in the city.



When we got there, there was a long wait for tickets but thankfully we already had ours so we were up fairly quickly. We loved this experience. Seeing the skyline at night was really special. I really wish we could go back and relive this moment now. Seeing the Chrysler Building was a particular high point for me. We were also lucky enough to see the two beams coming from the 9/11 Memorial since it was the day before the 15th anniversary so they were rehearsing. We spent quite a long time up here. It was busy so we had to wait our turn to take our photos.



Excuse the picture overload!



















Once we headed downstairs, we stopped by the gift shop for a magnet (we had a board to fill with magnets from all of the sights and places we were to visit in the next fortnight) which cost $6. We also stopped by Walgreen’s at the exit for some water for back in the hotel room ($3) before making our way back.

The journey back to the hotel (on the 7 from Grand Central) was fairly uneventful (thankfully!) and we were back at the hotel, showered, a bit unpacked and in bed by 12.30am. Boy were we ready for that!









Steps: 28,151 (19.17km)

[joanna23]

Wow the photos are just amazing! The night time photos are breath taking. You must be so happy with them. Which hotel did you stay in? First family stay in NY for us next year so I'm stalking all the experts.

[NatsyNoo]

Originally Posted by joanna23

Wow the photos are just amazing! The night time photos are breath taking. You must be so happy with them. Which hotel did you stay in? First family stay in NY for us next year so I'm stalking all the experts.

See more...

Thank you! We were really happy with them!
We stayed in Queens at the Wyndham Long Island City. We did this deliberately to try and save money for this leg of the trip. It was a 10 minute subway ride into the city so no real inconvenience.

[Disney Wishing]

Can't believe you're back already! What a nightmare journey from the airport. Glad the rest of the day went more to plan. Looking forward to hearing about the rest of the trip.

[Lizzim]

Wow, I cannot believe you lasted so late... we were sooo tired our first day in New York!

[NatsyNoo]

Originally Posted by Disney Wishing

Can't believe you're back already! What a nightmare journey from the airport. Glad the rest of the day went more to plan. Looking forward to hearing about the rest of the trip.

See more...

Oh I know it was an absolute nightmare! We were glad to get there in the end! Thanks for reading!

Originally Posted by Lizzim

Wow, I cannot believe you lasted so late... we were sooo tired our first day in New York!

See more...

Haha we were impressed too! Adrenaline helps us a lot when we're on holiday and also the knowledge that if we didn't get it done that night, we most likely wouldn't manage it

[Guest]

What a first day! Poor Matt, good choice with the black suitcase! Glad Louise restored your day! Looking forward to reading more!

[tracy99]

What a great start,to your report.
Could not imagine,getting the subway,with all the baggage you had,so hats off to you for that.as you say,it would have been straight forward,if it had gone to plan.
But what a busy first day,you certainly hit the ground running.
Absolutely loved your night time photos & they brought back some lovely memories.
Looking forward to reliving our time in Hawaii,through your report,so really looking forward to reading more.
Don't keep us waiting too long
Tracy x

[NatsyNoo]

Originally Posted by princess_chazy

What a first day! Poor Matt, good choice with the black suitcase! Glad Louise restored your day! Looking forward to reading more!

See more...

Thank you!

Originally Posted by tracy99

What a great start,to your report.
Could not imagine,getting the subway,with all the baggage you had,so hats off to you for that.as you say,it would have been straight forward,if it had gone to plan.
But what a busy first day,you certainly hit the ground running.
Absolutely loved your night time photos & they brought back some lovely memories.
Looking forward to reliving our time in Hawaii,through your report,so really looking forward to reading more.
Don't keep us waiting too long
Tracy x

See more...

Haha we always pack a lot in when we go away, we can sleep when we get home!
I'll try not to keep you waiting too long. I have typed up day 2 & 3 today and sorted day 4-6 photos so it's all coming along. Hawaii will be from day 7, I'll get there as quickly as I can!