NYC in 4 days

In March I was lucky enough to go to New York for 4 days with my university! It was an amazing time but I have never done so much walking and sightseeing in my life. I will do my best to summarise everything I got up to in those 4 days and give you my suggestions of my favourite things to do in the Big Apple!

We arrived late on the Wednesday afternoon (after a 3 hour wait in passport control) so we literally just checked in to the Westside YMCA, got a McDonalds and went to bed! For that reason I am starting this from Thursday

DAY 1 

After a free breakfast from Johns Diner we headed over to the High Line Walk. It’s a path that follows an old railway line and goes through the Lower West side of Manhattan ending up at the Whitney Museum. I think if you went in the summer it would be beautiful with all the plants but unfortunately when I was there it was all a bit dried up! After this we went for lunch at the Chelsea Market which you have to go to, the choice of food and the atmosphere was incredible. We explored Greenwich Village and, one of the highlights of the trip, visited DO the Cookie Dough shop which is a must go for sweet toothers like me! Once we were all on a bit of a sugar high we walked up 5th Avenue, going past iconic buildings like the Empire State Building and the Flat Iron as well as popping into some shops. To finish off this day we watched the sunset and all the city lights switch on at the top of the Rockefeller building (known as Top of the Rock) which I couldn’t recommend enough, you should definitely book it here if you’ve got a trip planned!

DAY 2

When I say it rained from the moment I woke up to the moment I got back into bed I am not joking, it was pretty grim. BUT we still tried to make the most of the day. We spent the morning exploring MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) which has loads of beautiful classics such as Starry Night by Van Gogh as well as new, quirky modern pieces. Afterwards we chose to brave the downpour and head to Time Square, which was actually pretty amazing in the rain as all the lights reflected off the puddles. We wanted to visit the Cooper Hewitt museum but had loads of issues with the subway and the buses so we decided to do another NYC must-do and get a classic yellow cab there. The Cooper Hewitt museum had a really cool room in which you could draw patterns that would be projected onto the walls like wallpaper but unfortunately we went at a time when they were refurbishing a lot of exhibitions so there wasn’t really much else to see. Now when I say we got soaked on the walk home across Central Park I mean my coat went about 50 shades darker and you could literally ring out my backpack. Due to this we decided to have a night in the hostel and ordered a Pizza that was about the size of manhole cover but unbelievably delicious.

DAY 3

Thankfully the rain decided to stop but the temperature did drop to near freezing (NYC seems to have every kind of weather possible in the space of a few days!). We wrapped up warm and jumped on the subway over to Brooklyn. Once there we basically turned back on ourselves and walked back into Manhattan over the Brooklyn Bridge, which had some incredible views of the new World Trade Centre (just to add this in here I had previously visited the 9/11 memorial on my last trip to NYC and I would 100000% recommend for you to go and see it we just couldn’t fit it in on this trip). From there we explored China Town, Little Italy and Soho, which has some unbelievable shops, till we ended up at the famous Katz Deli. Now if you want proper authentic feeling American dining this is the place to go, the sandwiches were pretty much the size of my head and tasted absolutely unbelievable. It’s also where loads of famous scenes are filmed like the one in Harry met Sally where Sally, lets just say, gets very very excited. To finish of the day we headed down to Wall Street and got the ferry across to Staten Island to see the Statue of Liberty. Although this ferry doesn’t take you directly to the lady herself it’s free and you do get a very good view of her.

DAY 4 

This was our last day in NYC and we were blessed with gorgeous sunshine! We only really had the morning before we had to head off to catch the long flight back to London so we decided to spend it in Central Park. We climbed the rocks, watched some baseball, visited Strawberry Fields and soaked up the sun eating a giant pretzel. The highlight of the day, and the park, though was taking a row boat out across the lake. The views were beautiful and it was just downright fun! Seeing as passport control was such a faff on the day we arrived we had to head to the airport quite early in order to ensure we made our flight okay so all we really did after that was kill time in JMF sitting in McDonalds!

And that was the end of that! We managed to fit so much into every day and I really feel like we got the real NYC experience! Have you been to NYC before? What were your favourite places to go?

Go and grab another cuppa on me, Em x

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