NYC! :) (finally)

I know I've only taken forever to write this post, but to my defense i've been busy... But mostly lazy as it is my summer after all! :) 
Our NYC trip, two weeks ago started with a lot of panic, as we were scheduled to depart by bus at midnight Friday night. We left checked the metro and found a good time to leave and we headed out. What we didn't account for, though, is the ongoing (and very annoying) track maintenance we have been dealing with all summer.. Truly I should have known better, but none the less, we headed out finding out our train was very late as was our transfer train.. Another thing I didn't look close enough at was the location to get the bus. Another dumb mistake... Long story short, we got to the bus at exactly midnight and after much panic on my part! After that, we were off to NYC! 
Before leaving, we had planned out everything we were going to do during our limited time in New York! Our bus trip lasted about 5 hours with a stop in Baltimore and Philadelphia. Although we only saw these places at night, it was nice, as we didn't make it back.. We arrived in New York City about 5 AM and headed to the Tic Toc Diner. It was a nice little place to eat and hang out while we waited for the sun to rise. After a large breakfast we headed out at 6, starting at Wall Street, then heading to the site of the World Trade Centers and then to the Brooklyn Bridge. We walked about 1/3 rd of the way to Brooklyn before turning back. By that time, 8 AM we weren't really sure what to do, so we headed to Battery Park to look around and wait for our ferry boat to take us to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. By 9 we were on our way to the Statue of Liberty and then after walking around there a while headed to Ellis Island. They both were very cool to see! The funny part about Ellis Island is that Elena and I tried to sit through a 45 min movie about immigration. We have sat through many interesting movies that we have very much enjoyed, but this time I say try as neither of us were rested enough to sit through the talk and movie... We actually ended up both dozing off through the movie! We decided no more films over the weekend. 
After returning to Battery Park in Manhattan, we headed to a little cafe to get lunch and some iced coffee... We needed it. We then decided to walk up to the recently new Highline Park which is a walkway/park created from the old railroad tracks that are about 3 stories above the city. I loved it, as I had also learned about it in school. Elena wasn't as thrilled after we had walked about 3 miles in the heat by time we had reached the end.. By that point we were ready for air conditioning so we headed to the hotel to relax a bit and shower before heading out for our evening plans. Once a bit more refreshed, we headed towards our night destination, Top of the Rock, to find dinner. We got off the subway, right at time square, which we hadn't really planned but we were very excited about it! We took in all the sites of time square including walking into stores like the Hershey's massive store and the M&M factory store! We then headed to another small-ish cafe for dinner. After dinner we walked around a bit more before heading to Top of the Rock. Top of the Rock is a lookout building similar to the Empire State building but all the people that had reviews said it was better than the Empire State Building, so we decided to do it instead and do it in the evening so that we could see the city in the light and after the sun had set! We loved it! It was truly amazing to be able to just look for miles and see the skyline. New York really is an amazing city. 
Top of the Rock ended our night and boy were we happy to get some sleep! We started the next day by grabbing muffins and coffee and walking 3 blocks to central park. We are breakfast in the park and then walked around a good majority of central park! What a vast amount of green space in such a crowded city! I almost forgot I was in the city... After that, we started walking  down the 5th ave. shopping district. We went in a couple stores but mostly admired the expensive shopping from the outside.. We had then planned on going to the public library and seeing the original Winnie the Pooh stuffed animals, but apparently they set their own hours on Sundays and felt like they didn't want to be open that particular Sunday. We were bummed. From there we headed to Grand Central Station and walked around it and the little shops. 
That particular Sunday was the Woman's World Cup game so after Grand Central, we headed to a restaurant, which happened to be an Irish pub, to watch the game. We always enjoy air conditioning and food! 
After a disappointing game we walked around Time Square a bit more before heading to the bus station about an hour early and good thing we did. To make a long story short, the buses were running about an hour late and they had overfilled the busses. They brought an extra bus to accommodate the earlier crowd and having been so early we got to jump on that bus, allowing us to be one of the only people to leave on time. Good thing we did, as we got to the metro in time to catch the last two trains of the night back to our place. We finally arrived home about 12:30 AM and were happy to go to bed, as we both had work early that day.

Our trip to New York was fun, but both Elena and I decided we would never want to live there and had we been more rested and in less of a time crunch, we may have even loved it.. At least we got to see it! One day I will go back for a visit, but the city is just a bit much for me. 

Pictures of the trip to come!