New York City Spring Break

New York City Day 1 ½

It looks like I have found my new favorite city. I now understand why everyone has at least one item that says “I Love NY”. We arrived in New York City last night after traveling a combined 13 hours.

There were a few hiccups along the way. We decided to drive through DC to see a few of the sites along the way. Little did we know a majority of the roads in DC were closed due to a White House fence jumper the night before. Maybe we should pay closer attention to the news. What was supposed to be a 20-minute detour turned into an hour and a half traffic mess. The only thing I felt relaxed about in that time period was our car insurance insurance4motortrade.co.uk, I knew that we were fully covered if anything occurred. I still feel the need to apologize to my husband for suggesting that pit stop.

We also had a little issue with our Airbnb booking. We were originally going to stay on Long Beach and take the train into the city. But when we got to our Airbnb place we realized that we didn’t have the entire place to ourselves as the listing was advertised. We were going to be staying in someone’s attic instead. We quietly left and canceled our reservation and drove into the city to get a hotel room.

Now that we are in our hotel in the middle of Manhattan we now believe we made the right decision. It would have been awkward to stay in someone’s attic with 2 kids and now we are walking distance to Times Square.

So far we have spent some time wondering around 5^th Avenue and the area around our hotel. We’ve checked out some cool bars, restaurants, and shops. And we spent most of our afternoon checking out the Museum of Modern Art. I’ll write a more in depth post about MOMA soon.

Here are some helpful tips I’ve learned so far from my NYC journey:

1. NEVER drive in NYC. If you have the option to fly into NYC take that option. I will write a more depth post on why flying will save you money. But for now, trust me. Just fly.
2. Don’t pay for an Airbnb booking without talking to the host first. We’ve had all successful Airbnb bookings until this one so we got a little confident and did the book now option for this particular house. After booking we never got a personalized welcome email with check-in instructions or anything from our host. Just a standard booking confirmation email from Airbnb. We tried to call, text and email our host several times before our trip and never got a response. Red flags all over the place. So just make sure to talk to your potential host before you book the place.
3. Plan ahead for your meals to save money. NYC can be a VERY expensive place to eat. If you wait until you are hangry to start looking for a place to eat, you are more likely to go some place close that will be more expensive rather than finding somewhere affordable that may be another block down. There are affordable places to eat. You just have to find them.

We’re off to play in the city some more! I’ll be back with more tips and updates soon! Oh and I welcome any tips for places we don’t want to miss while we are here! Drop your suggestions in the comments below!