Day 1-2: New York!

For those who don't want to read the whole thing and all the little stories Steven and I want to remember...feel free to just breeze through the pics (they're interesting enough). Doesnt hurt my feelings one bit. This blog serves as a journal for mainly us and our future posterity--sooo it might be too detailed haha.

Before I get into the details of our trip, I first want to preface the whole meaning of our even going. We were living in Salem, working like responsible adults after graduation (me as a nanny, Steven for his dad). But decided this is probably the only time in our lives we can actually pick up and leave for 6 weeks--so we did. We bought our tickets 3 days before we were to actually leave, requiring us to spend 3 whole days in our bed planning the entire thing. It.Was.Exhausting. And worth it.

So let's start! We went from PDX (waking up at 2AM, yikes) to Seattle to Newark (6 hours total in case you care). Our flight to Europe was scheduled to leave from Newark so we decided to spend a few days in New York City, a short bus/train ride over.

Aside from the fact that New York is....New York....it was extremely memorable for two reasons:

1. It was the first stop on our trip

2. This is where we (mainly me) learned to walk ALL DAY long. We really broke in our feet here in NYC.

WE MADE IT! And were totally exhausted. We were so blessed to have our friend Mckay Potter lend us his hotel room at the MARRIOTT in TIME SQUARE (amazing!). He just happened to be there the exact same days as us for a work trip. So it was free and we love free. Below is a picture of how we looked walking around trying to find our place in time square.

But we did find it! And this is what our first room was like--we were so spoiled. Check out the view from the room!

Being so close made sight seeing a lot easier. We still had to walk quite a ways to see the statue of liberty, flat iron building, LDS temple, etc...but that was our choice. The first night we chose to take it easy--we were pretty exhausted from the flight. We decided to walk around timesquare, take some pics, eat dinner at Stardust Diner (recommended by Dee), and head back to rest and shower. Enjoy some pics from the first night, will ya?

This was at the diner...they sing and dance. Sorta like a broadway preview. Pretty cool. We split a HUGE burger and just enjoyed the show. 

Biggest M&M factory ever....Steven had to go.

At the end of the night Mckay was able to come visit us and talk about his wedding plans and just life in general. What an awesome friend!

Day #2

We slept in til 11, the room was too dark so we struggled to get out of bed. Then we walked literally all over NYC. We saw the empire state building, ground zero, rode a ferry by the statue of liberty, went to central park, saw the LDS temple, and took lots of pics of ourselves. PICS:

Rearin 2 go

Empire state building

Flat iron--way cool in person.

Ground Zero--this place is almost holy in nature. It's so quiet even though there are hundreds of people looking around. If you go, you'll feel it.

A cool pic I took from the ferry. Looks photoshopped but it's just not.

New York LDS Temple! Actually very hard to get a picture of because of where it is located. But very cool. Wish we had time to do some work. 

After our long day we needed food. So we took the subway and walked partially back to Olive Garden. For those of you who are like??? Why didn't you eat somewhere NYC authentic? I say...we are on a budget and we have $100 in GC for Olive Garden. And it was delish. But our server sucked.

Afterwards we went back to our hotel to relax and people watch. End of NYC.
Thanks for reading!!
Click the link below to see a video recap I made of our visit to NYC.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbFsN5tpJJc&feature=youtu.be