Continuation of our New Jersey Vacation...
(If you haven't checked out my New Jersey post, click here)
Another major point in our trip was our weekend in New York City, we both have never been before and were quite excited to make our own experiences. We got to experience the train, the subways, the crazy taxi drivers, New York only food, Christmas in NYC, and the extra long New York City blocks. We were only able to visit a small portion of NYC (due to our limited time), but what we did see was awesome!
We rode the train from New Jersey to New York City, which let me tell you is its own experience. We arrived at the well known train station, Penn Station. We were able to tell when we were getting really close to NYC because the closer we got, the more "Santa Clauses" showed up! It wasn't until we were on our way to NYC that we found out the Santa Claus Convention was going on. Every where we walked Saturday, we saw them. It was quite interesting to see how many people dressed up, which seemed to be more than not.
After arriving in Penn Station, we tried to figure our next route via subway to our hotel. Unfortunately, our hotel was on the opposite side from Penn Station, but that was okay because we all got an amazing deal on our hotel rooms!
That Saturday might not have been the best time to hit up NYC, considering it was snowing! The majority of the time on Saturday it was snowing. It was pretty awesome at first, because we don't deal with snow a lot back home, but after a while, we were over walking in the snow!
Once we arrived at our hotel, we were so excited to check out our rooms because of the views! Our hotel was located near the harbor, so depending on the room you got, you may be able to see the Statue of Liberty and the water. My husband and I had reseved a corner suite, so half our room had windows! Our room faced the harbor, unfortunately we weren't able to see the Statue of Liberty, but the view was still amazing to look at. The building to the right of our hotel seemed like it was an apartement building (which had amazing gargoyles along the top few floors, the architecture was beautiful to look at), then right next to that building was were the Twin Towers use to be (which is now the memorial site).
In our lobby the hotel had up their Christmas tree! It was so gorgeous and so huge! I had to take a picture because I was loving the colors and the oversized ornaments!
As mentioned before, our hotel was located literally right next to the memorial. From one of the windows of our room we could see the entrance/line to the memorial. Of course visiting NYC, the memorial was a must see for us. We both remembered 9/11 like it was yesterday, from what were doing that day, to the news clips, so the memorial was something we had to do. The experience getting into the memorial was interesting. I actually had no idea what to expect, other than the memorial itself. The line was long, but didn't take too long to get through. I think having a visitors pass from our hotel made that much easier. We had noticed the line for the people that didn't have the pass had to wait in a different line that didn't move quite as fast as ours did. So thanks Marriott Hotel! After fighting the line, we had to go through security, metal detectors and all. Which is totally understandable and makes you feel much safier there. The memorial is so beautiful! The size of the memorials themselves is so surreal and to think the Twin Towers were that size! When we visit NYC again, we will definitely go back to the memorial. Hopefully next time we go, the museum will be open, this time it wasn't complete, so we didn't get to look around.
Once we made it the Rockefeller Center, I just couldn't help but admire all the Christmas decorations. They had a huge tree that overlooked the ice rink they always have there during winter. Unfortunetaly I took the picture of the tree on the wrong side. The correct side had huge lighted presents under it, which was leveled with the ice rink. It was pretty awesome to see all of it and all the festivaties. The huge ornaments in the photo above are from the Rockefeller Center. They also had some oversized Christmas lights. It was pretty cool to see them in person.
We then went to Time Square. It was awesome to see Time Square in person and see all the huge stores that are all around it. It was also nice to see the huge Jumbotron in person! Although there was a lot of hustle and bustle, I still enjoyed seeing it all.
The photo below is the Bubba Gump restaurant in Time Square. I just had to take a photo of that, since I watched Forrest Gump when I was younger. I couldn't just walk by and not take a photo. haha ;)
I had a blast walking around New York and totally enjoyed seeing everything. I can't wait to go back and visit more tourist things. Maybe next time we will make it to the Statue of Liberty, since this time we didn't make it.
Hope you all enjoyed my walk down memory lane. If you have been to New York City before, share in the comments below some of your memories. If you haven't, share whether you want to visit one day or not. Also share what you would do while you are there. I would love to hear all about it!
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