NYC - Day 1

IMG_5400Early Saturday morning we flew into the Newark, NJ airport (cheapest flights) and managed to get Amtrak tickets to Penn Station without any incidents. Figuring out the public transportation system can be a bit intimidating at first, but the city does a good job of making it as simple as possible. Plus there are plenty of signs everywhere to help you find the stations and ticket booths, as well as attendants on duty to answer any questions. From Penn Station it was a quick 5-10 min walk to our hotel, located at the base of the Empire State Building, where we were able to drop off our bags (for free!) since it was too early to check in. Once that was taken care of went for breakfast run at this awesome hole in the wall bagel place just down the street.
A quick word about NY bagels. They are the best. It doesn't matter where you purchase them from. Any hole in the wall will do. You will not be disappointed. In fact, my friend from NY (the one who gave me most of the tips and advice for our trip) wanted me to bring her back a whole bag! My recommendation is the Everything Bagel.
After breakfast we took off walking down 5th avenue known for it’s stores and shopping. Neither of us are really big shoppers so we mostly just people watched and enjoyed the sites of the big city. Having never been before it's quite a sight. Concrete jungle really is a fitting description. So many buildings. All of them huge. The city is just packed, with all the buildings touching and looking like they've been built on top of each other.
Our first stop on 5th was the New York Library, where walked around for a bit. The building is pretty awesome inside. After that it was mostly just window shopping. A lot of these major stores put up pretty awesome Christmas decorations that were fun to see. The store front of Lord and Taylor was probably the most impressive.
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We were sure to take another pit stop at the St. Francis Cathedral. Holy wow (no pun intended). So pretty! It felt good to sit down and rest our feet for a bit too. We stayed for a while and caught the first part of a mass before continuing on down 5th Ave until we came to the Apple store. John really wanted to go inside that one, so we made it our turn around point. It's always fun to browse around in there. By this time we were completely pooped, but had to walk all the way back to our hotel! It was a bit rough. Once we finally got back and checked in we both crashed. It was nice to have a good nap and rest after our early morning flight and initial jaunt through the city.
When we woke up it was dinner time and we were both pretty hungry. So we hit up Yelp to figure out where to go. We found out that we were smack dab in the middle of Korea Town. Almost all the restaurants that came up were Korean. So we figured why not try it out? BIG MISTAKE. Oh it was gross. I kind of feel bad saying this; I'm sure there are people who love this kind of food, but it definitely wasn't for us. First of all, the ‘water’ they gave us was some sort of corn tea. Basically corn soaked in water and then strained out. It tasted like drinking the juice from a can of corn. Nasty. THEN the hot item on the menu was Chicken Gizzards. In the reviews everyone raved about them. So we thought we should try them. SICK NASTY. Ugh, so chewy haha! You basically had to swallow your bites whole. Not the best way to kick off the trip. It was pretty funny though. Probably not our smartest decision, but it made for a good story and is something we still laugh about.
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After the dinner disaster we headed back over to the New York Library to check out Bryant Park located right behind it (on the  west side). The park turns into a christmas festival during the holidays with a pop up market, different booths, and an ice rink. the rink was PACKED with a line wrapping all throughout the park! So we just watched the skaters and laughed at all the falls. We walked through the booths, and got some yummy strawberry dark hot chocolate to finish off the night.
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Super easy to tell when we're getting close to our hotel! All in all it was a great first day in the city.

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