Bright lights, city sights, good friends and a wholeeeee lotta $1 cheese pizza, New York City was the perfect place to start the next chapter of our adventure (TOGETHER!!!) in the USA.
Due to life being too much fun and the struggle of writing a blog on a cellphone rather than a laptop, there is around a month of missed adventures on the blog at this stage, which we will catch up on at some point.
Jelley celebrated her 25th birthday in Portugal with NZ friends, island hopped through the Cyclades in Greece, spent a few days eating pizza in Milan and Venice before ending the Europe experience in London, visiting many friends from home, drinking a lot of cheap wine and feeling cold and wet again for the first time in a while. Luke concluded his epic cycle trip from Maine to his final point in Charleston, South Carolina when his bike broke for the last time, before taking a few days to relax by Miami Beach, swimming, showering and most importantly, recuperate after a long 1800 miles of riding.
On August 1st, Jel flew into Newark Liberty International airport, and we were reunited for the first time in 2 long months. It felt like a lifetime ago we were saying goodbye in Singapore, and even longer ago that we were at home in NZ at the lakehouse in Hawea making vague USA plans, thinking this stage of our adventure was so far into the distant future. It was surreal to be together and sharing a coffee again, and we felt a surge of love and happiness knowing we would be sharing the next stage of our journey together.
We were fortunate enough to tick everything off of our list during our time in the big apple and managed to stay in 3 different locations (boroughs). It was Jelley’s first time in NYC, and a childhood dream come true, inspired by movies, Friends and Gossip Girl. Luke graduated from college in upstate New York in Saratoga Springs, and while he had visited before, it was a novel experience being a tourist in his own country.
Our first stay was in a beautiful studio airbnb apartment in they leafy streets of Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. With a suburban feel, it was an easy way to transition into the bustle of New York, and so great to finally have a kitchen to make eggs & avocado on toast for breakfasts again! While we only had a couple of nights here, it was great to have a home base to catch up, set a game plan for New York and get up to date on future travels plans and flights that we just couldn’t book over skype!
We then moved up to Harlem to stay with Luke’s “camp America” friend Emma for a few nights. It was so awesome to catch up with Emma and her move to the big city, and we are so grateful for her hosting us in the lounge!
Our last couple of nights were spent across the Hudson River with one of Jelley’s travel friends Sam, a real character she met in Thailand a couple of years ago. It was a chilled escape from the hustle of the city and beautiful to see the skyline of Manhattan lit up at night.
We are super stoked to have shared our time in New York with so many amazing friends and it was awesome spending time with Emma, Sam & Danielle, Sav, Kelli, Elyssa & Alyssa throughout the week! Hopefully we will run into you all at some other stage in our time in the states or back home in NZ!
The Bucket List, which kept growing as the week went on!
1. Statue of Liberty. This was a must do, and fortunately there is a free (what?!?!) ferry which takes thousands of tourists a day for views of the statue and the New York City skyline.
2. Trump Tower. This was one of our first destinations with Alyssa and we had fun trying to get access to as many floors as possible, although the ‘public’ terrace wasn’t accessible to the public. We came across a few more Trump Towers in our exploring, but they didn’t have quite as much security or giftshops.
3. New York style pizza, way too many times. $1 cheese slices were a daily lunch stop!
4. Taking the New York Subway. Every time we ventured into these deep dirty tunnels below the city we were amazed by the smell, the filth and the rats inhabiting the subway. It was a huge contrast from the modern infrastructure found in Singapore which was the last city we were both in together.
5. Times Square. Bright lights, trashy entertainers and a whole lot of people!
6. Wall Street. Yup the center for New York stock exchange and bank bail outs.
7. Luke popped a surprise date night and caught up with an old family friend .. who happens to be a magician! We had a beautiful dinner and magic show with plenty of tricks and even a little hypnosis at the end of the night. A super fun and unique experience.
8. Taking a yellow cab. An iconic New York experience, Jelley was super keen to fit a ride in. We didn’t expect it to be when our train took an alternative route and we had to hail a cab to get to the broadway show in time and jump out halfway through to run through Times Square..
9. Broadway Show! We got a great deal on tickets for the longest running show on Broadway, Chicago! Absolutely amazing and wish we had seen more shows while we were here!
10. Heading up to the Oneworld observatory in the new World Trade Center. We highly recommend this touristic activity, and without giving too much away, it is so much more than getting in an elevator, taking on the view from 100 floors above New York and going down again. It was also a sobering experience to wander around the 9/11 memorial at the base and it was well worth the visit.
11. MoMA (Museum of Modern Art). We were keen to check out one art gallery or museum so combined both, but unfortunately visited on the free entry Friday night, so the crowds were crazy!
12. Central Park. Another icon of New York, we loved wandering through the leafy paths and listening to local musicians, people watching and escaping the bustling city streets.
13. Highline walk. The coolest modern architecture we saw during our time in New York! The old train tracks have been revitalized into a public greenspace and walkway surrounded by pop up food stalls and bars.
14. Walking across the Brooklyn Bridge – probably something we should’ve done on a weekday as it was packed with walkers and cyclists but still a fun activity!
15. Barcades. Seriously the coolest idea!! Scattered across the city, barcades are exactly as the name suggests, bars with arcade machines in them. So much fun!
16. Good old cheap American beer. This is an ongoing list item for our time in the USA, but we managed to get through a couple of good ones in NYC, especially on our last day in Hoboken (Guinness world record winner for the most bars and restaurants in a square mile), where it rained all day and all we could do was make the most of Monday happy hour specials. This was also Jelley’s first buffalo chicken wings experience! Yum!
We’ve spent the last couple of days surrounded by corn fields and amazing people in Osmond, Nebraska and can’t wait to share our experiences here very soon!!
Until then,
A Kiwi & a Cali xo
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