NEW YORK CITY - DAY 4

Friday August 14

We started our last full day in NYC with a taxi ride to the ferry. This by far was the most intense taxi ride we had our entire trip! Once we got to the ferry we went to Governor's Island. Governors Island used to be occupied by the Coast Guard and now has been made into a huge park.

The reason we went to Governors Island on Friday was so we could ride some of these...

... for free. Yep Friday is free bike rental day! We had so much fun exploring the island on our bikes.

My favorite part of the island was the hammock park!

It was the perfect place to look at the Statue of Liberty!

After catching the ferry back to Manhattan we grabbed Chipotle for lunch and headed to the Financial District...

...where we had to take a picture with the Bull.

We headed over to Ground Zero. It was hard to imagine being there on 9/11. Matt knows a lot about what happened that day and how they are rebuilding the area.

Century 21 is a huge store right across from ground zero that we went to. It's basically a discount store where you can get designer brands for cheap. It was very overwhelming! Everyone but me and Michael got something.

We hopped on the Subway and went to the hotel until the International Center of Photography was entrance by donation. It was nice to be able to rest for about half an hour!

We had to go to the ICP gallery for Michael's school requirement of going to 2 galleries. The exhibit was fashion photography and I found it interesting. After this we still needed find another gallery. We walked around looking for one and ended up in front of Christie's which we decided the art in the windows was kind of like a gallery.

With the gallery requirement completed we got a cab to take us to Jackson Hole. This place served the biggest hamburgers ever!

I ate about 85% of it which more than everyone thought I could do.


They did eat it all!

Our last night in NYC was spent in Times Square. This summer they closed the main road that goes through Times Square so people can hang out in the streets. They have put out a bunch of lawn chairs and this is how they were arranged that night!

We got ice cream and made sure to take a picture in front of the Broadway show we saw.

It was a good final night!

This concludes our trip to New York (unless you really care about the plane ride back which was really not all that exciting!)

But before I completely finish I can't leave out this picture...

This is in honor of "The Triple"... an ever present phrase during our trip.

NEW YORK CITY- DAY 3

Thursday August 13

As usual we started the day off with our free breakfast. When then headed to the subway where we rode the PathTrain under the Hudson River...

...to Hoboken, New Jersey. Yep another state I get to check off my list.

Hoboken was totally different than NYC.


Although about 250,000 people live there it seemed like a small town in comparison. Because we were there during the day, it was really dead since most people that live there work in the city. The playgrounds, however, were packed full of kids. You could tell that all the kids were with nannies because you would have a child of one ethnicity being pushed in a stroller by a lady of a completely different ethnicity.

While walking through one of these crowded parks, Michael spotted this bench. I was quite surprised to see this in the state of New Jersey.

This is us in one of the parks...


The whole reason we went to Hoboken was not so I could check another state of my list of "States Megan Has Been To" but because this is where Matt works. He is basically the fundraising coordinator for a private Chrisitan school.

We checked out the school... and his office.

We then headed to the waterfront park.

The view of New York City was amazing!

While at the park Michael taught me a lot about photography. I learned how to make the background blurry. This was my best shot...

After the park we hopped back on the PathTrain and headed back to Manhattan where we grabbed lunch and ate in The Kings College lounge area in the Empire State Building.

After lunch we hailed a cab... (I wasn't very good at that game)...



...and had them take us to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (aka The Met, aka massive museum). I liked the MET better than the MoMA. I have now seen the first painting of Michaelangelo so my life is now complete.

So, after walking about 10 miles around the MET it was definitely time for dinner. We hit up this really good Thai place called Jasmine. Matt's friend came and ate with us. It was quite fun.

So that night we went to the top of the ESB. Yes that is right 85 stories in the air. We did get to skip all the lines since Matt is a tenant. Honestly I found it quiet terrifying and got no good pictures. To take a picture you had to lean you camera our over the bars and over the ledge. That freaked me out so... all of my pictures either have the bars in the them or are blurry because I was too scared to hold the camera steady. Apparently I was one of the few that was scared. Some lady had three of her very small children sitting up on the interior ledge leaning against the bars. That freaked me out.

See I told you no good pics...

...but good attempt I suppose.

NEW YORK CITY- DAY 2

Wednesday August 12

We started the morning off with our free breakfast buffet! When we checked into our hotel the previous day we had to wait about 15 minutes for our room so they gave us free breakfast coupons.

After finishing breakfast we headed down to Times Square to visit the TKTS to buy Broadway tickets.

Michael and I played with taking pictures of the pigeons while the tickets were being purchased.



Next, we headed over to H & M and Macy's. Going to H & M was the only thing I contributed to our list of things to do while we were in NYC. I've always wanted to go!


I ended up getting a super cute dress!

Once our shopping adventure was completed we headed over to The Vogue, which is where Matthew will be living this semester. We checked out his soon to be room. This was the view from the balcony...


Next stop, the MoMA. Technically the reason this whole trip to NYC was occurring was because Michael had to go for school. So, that means there were some things we HAD to do like go to two museums, two galleries, and a Broadway show. So, this was our first museum.




After looking at as much modern art as we could handle, we grabbed lunch at a pizza/Subway place. Then we headed to see...
It was quite entertaining and everyone liked it. One of the girls had been Elphaba in Wicked and there were a few Wicked lines she said during 9 to 5. Those were probably my favorite parts.

The show was in the Marriott Marquis Theater so we had to ride the intense Marriott elevators up to the 45th floor while we were there. The elevators are completely clear so you can watch the ground quickly get further and further away as you go up.
Afterwards we headed to Schnipper's, a burger/sloppy joe place that had been on the Food Network. This was the only place we ever went to that served Dr. Pepper!
Next on the list, was Magnolia Bakery for some yummy...

banana pudding...

... and cupcakes. We ate these in Rockefeller Center.

We ended our day where we began, Times Square, and headed back to the hotel.
But, Mooks and I didn't call it a night just yet. I just got a new camera (post on that to come) and have no idea how to do real photography (aka manual). Mooks takes awesome "real" pictures so he taught me a lot on the trip. So on this night, we headed back out to Times Square with our cameras to get some awesome night shots.

Here are just a few of mine...

NEW YORK CITY- DAY 1

Tuesday August 11

On Tuesday JP's parents, his brother Michael, and I flew out of Atlanta to NYC and took a cab to our hotel, The Courtyard by Marriott at 40th and 5th. JP's brother Matt who lives in NYC came and met us at our hotel... and then began our LONG LONG walk.

Our first stop was the Empire State Building (which I've learned the New Yorkers refer to it as the ESB building). This is where Matt's school is so we checked it out. We didn't go to the top but are doing that one night.

Our next stop was Shake Shack. It is this cute little place in a park where you eat outside.

If you ask for water you get these tiny little shots of water

Their burgers and shakes are much bigger and are super good!



We then proceeded to High Line Park. This was quite a trek that took us through many neighborhoods such as Chelsea, Gramercy, Greenwich Village and Union Square.

High Line Park was an old elevated railroad track that had been turned into a really nice park.


We then headed to Hudson River Park where you could look out over the Hudson and see both NYC and New Jersey.

Notice Mooks is making a funny face in honor of JP (who rarely looks normal in a pic)

The sunset was beautiful!

We headed back to our hotel (at that point we were 3 miles from our hotel). We stopped at The Strand bookstore which was "18 miles of books". We then hopped on the Subway and got out at Times Square.

We finally made it back to our hotel after a great first day at NYC!

My first impressions of NYC:
1. All the girls where skirts or dresses
2. There are no obese people
3. At anytime you might get hit by a cab (although I'm much better at that) Or maybe a motorscooter. Mooks totally almost got hit by one.
4. I feel like I've been here before even though I haven't since I've seen it on tv so many times.
5. Speaking of tv I really feel like Friends is real and I keep saying things like "Oh this is where Ross went or oh that's where Joey sailed the sailboat etc."