Saturday - Despite the dangerous whether surrounding Amsterdam delaying our flights and scaring me to death (well, almost) we finally arrived in the city that never sleeps at about 10pm. It was so magical when we landed as we could see all of the snow on the ground from the wintery week before we had arrived, and decided that we would go to Central Park the next morning to make the most of it. Once we got to our hotel after getting the subway from JFK to Times Square, and avoiding some suspicious looking characters I may add, we asked the hotel staff for some good food that we could take back to the room to eat. Just around the corner was a deli that sold a selection of sugary blue drinks, family sized bags of crisps, pizza slizes the size of my head and monster sandwiches. I got food envy as tom chose a salami and jalapeno 'panini' and I chose a chicken, pesto and cheese one, with a radioactive-looking drink with 400 calories in it! We ate our dinner watching the awful Fox News with this for a view:
Sunday - When we woke up we were so excited to go exploring, and as we walked up our street on 48th and 8th street, an Applebees caught our eye and we ate there for breakfast. This was the start of Tom's first tipping experience, and he was horrified at the amount we had to leave for the waiters and waitresses for very little service. Tom had a savoury omelette with potato and I had this:
Our day just kept getting better and better as the waitress complemented me on my coat as I walked out of the restaurant, so with a spring in my step and a search for some gloves for Tom, we headed towards Central Park. Now, a walk that should have only taken us 10 minutes max took us over half an hour as we weaved our way through the streets half trying to find Tom some gloves and a scarf because of the freezing cold weather, and half trying to hunt down Central Park. We got there in the end and found shelter in the Time Warner Centre in Columbus Circle near Central Park.
With Tom's new scarf in hand, we walked over to Central Park, and this view, for some reason, is what I remebered from New York last time I came:
We used my selfie stick and had a lovely walk through Central Park....
We then decided to head to the Apple Store where I could buy Tom a phone cover he had been pining over since before Christmas. After this, we headed to Times Square where we took lots of photos, I spent way too much in Sephora and we went to an Irish pub where I ordered my first and last (sa far) raspberry cider - cider with raspberry liqueur.
We then headed back to the hotel to have a nap as we were surprisingly jet lagged, and woke up again at about 8pm to have a meal as The Hard Rock Cafe. Despite the restaurant looking great with all the costumes of famous singers throughout the years, and the best service we had probably all week, the meal was a bit of a let down. We both had burgers and I had a cheesecake for pudding, which was a bit of a let down but we enjoyed the experience anyway. We got used to sitting at the bars in pub and restaurants, listening to the music, chatting, and watching the American sports on the TVs behind the bar.
I do have to say that I have seen my fair share of awful toilets having been travelling all around Asia... but the ones at Hard Rock must have been the worst I have ever seen in my life. I won't go into detail but I was left with only 1 cubicle in a decent enough state to use and I washed my hand twice in case I had caught any germs,
Monday - So Monday was really rainy and unfortunately took away all the snow from the ground. It was getting colder and colder, however, and would take us hours to warm up once getting back inside despite having hot showers and getting under the duvet. We went to a little American breakfast bar just off of Times Square, which we realised was only 2 minutes away from our hotel! I had bacon and eggs on a waffle which was.... interesting!
We decided we would go to Central Station in the morning, watch the passers-by, gawp at the architecture and check out the food market and restaurants downstairs. I accidentally spent $10 on literally a spoonful of lobster salad but it was the best salad I have ever tasted in my life - my mouth is watering just thinking about it!
We then headed over to the 9/11 memorial which had changed since I had last been there but was as beautiful as before.
Halfway through the holiday and so much more to write about... I will update with another post soon!
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