New York, New York

16/4 – Day One – Travel and first day in New York

Following our meal, some last minute packing and a night of anxious sleep, we awoke to our alarms at 5am on Sunday morning to get us from the Premier Inn to Heathrow T3 in time for check in. After years of living in London and growing ever frustrated with tourists, it was now our turn to join a busy commuter bus with our giant suitcases and try not to cause too much chaos, which we just about managed.

If you look very closely, you can see Matt’s eyes rolling as I forced him to take this photo

We made our way through security and waited in the terminal for our flight. Once we boarded we were fortunate to find our seats had been moved to the bulkhead row and we had more leg room than we knew what to do with!

Taken moments before I managed to spill most of the prosecco over myself.

The plane made its descent into JFK and the reality started to hit that this was our entry to the USA and our travels were really beginning! When booking this trip, we last minute decided that stopping off in New York on our way to San Francisco would be a good way for us to get our bearings and enjoy all the things the city is famous for (Pizza, Bagels and Yellow Cabs). Luckily, before we could be too enthusiastic we were brought back down to earth by the horrendous traffic heading into New York which our Uber driver happily informed us would be worse on the weekdays following. Fantastic. We arrived at our hotel at 2pm EST, checked in and went straight into tourist mode to make the most of the time we have in the city. Looking at the map, we were closest to the Financial district so headed to the World Trade Centre museum and memorial with a walk down to Wall street to see the Charging Bull (complete with a pro Ukrainian protester + lots of NYPD police) and the Fearless Girl (no protestors, lots of tourists).

The World Trade Centre Museum and memorial will almost certainly be one of the most moving and breath-taking moments in our trip. I was living in America when this happened remember the rolling news cover, but at thirteen I wasn’t able to comprehend the scale of the towers and the impact to American society which is evident when you visit and walk through the grounds.

We rounded off the day heading to a Pizza place called Keste which was a short walk from Wall Street and toward our hotel. Matt found Keste as part of a Diners, Drive Ins and Dives recommendation and it felt very fitting for our first evening in New York! By this point jet lag was really starting to hit, so we polished off our pizza and walked back to the hotel attempting to stay away until at least 8pm before we crashed out.

Great pizza and atmosphere but it was definitely overpriced for what we had. 3/5

As I write this blog post, Matt and I are getting ready to head into day three of our trip and final day in New York. Tomorrow (19/4) we travel to San Francisco so will have a plane journey to update on days two and three.

ps, Why is Times Square called Times Square? All we be revealed in the next post!