New York State of Mind

Hey guys!

It has been FOREVER since I last posted a blog post on here! I've been so busy lately and kinda lost my blogging mojo so hoping to get back into posting more regularly over the summer.

As some of you may know if you've been following my social media, myself and Kevin headed to New York back in March to celebrate our 10 year anniversary. It was our first time there and we absolutely LOVED it! I would absolutely 100% recommend it to anyone and we will most definitely go back there again. I decided to write a blog post giving you all the info on our trip - who we flew with, where we stayed, what we did etc.

How to Get There

We've been to America the past 5 years and have always flown from Dublin to clear immigration before arriving in the U.S. For this trip, we decided to fly from Cork via London Heathrow which meant we wouldn't clear immigration until we landed in JFK. Honestly, it was so much easier than travelling to Dublin. Last year in Dublin we spent almost 3 hours queueing in immigration and it was so bad that security were calling people for certain flights to skip the queue as their flight was about to leave. Doing immigration in New York was a breeeeeze! I expected long delays but we were through it and had our bags collected within half an hour. We flew with Aer Lingus to LHR and Virgin to JFK. This was our first time flying with Virgin and so far they're the best airline we've flown with - comfortable seats, friendly staff and really good food.

Where to Stay

We decided to get an apartment since we were going for a week. I wanted a serviced apartment to play it safe. These are basically apartments but with the same facilities as hotels e.g. housekeeping, reception etc. We stayed in Stay AKA Times Square and loved it. It was more expensive that other hotels but we wanted the extra space to chill out in the evenings and also since it was a special occasion we didn't mind spending a bit more. If we were to go back to New York, I would absolutely stay here again. The apartments were SO nice and just around the corner from Times Square. You can see our apartment tour vlog here. 

What to Do

We did the obvious tourist things to do while we were here since it was our first trip. We did the 9/11 and Ground Zero Tour which you can book here. We really enjoyed this tour and I'd definitely recommend taking a trip here - it's so surreal. 

The Occulus is also nearby which is definitely worth seeing - the architecture is amazing!

We also walked around the different avenues and streets of New York and visited the Rockefeller Center. We didn't do Top of the Rock but we did spend a bit of time in the area. 

We took a few trips to Central Park and managed to even get one day of snow there which was unbelievable. Central Park is huge but it's so gorgeous. We loved just strolling around there.

We decided in advance not to do Ellis Island but we did take the Staten Island ferry which is free and passes the Statue of Liberty. It takes about 25 minutes each way but is a nice way to see the Statue of Liberty without having to go to Ellis Island.

We also walked along Brooklyn Bridge which I highly recommend doing. We got the subway from Manhattan to Brooklyn and then walked along the Brooklyn Bridge back towards Manhattan. The views of the skyscrapers are unreal and the bridge itself is gorgeous. 

We did lots of shopping which we hadn't exactly planned on doing! We went to Jersey Gardens shopping mall which was about half an hour on the bus from Manhattan. The mall itself was only ok but I did get a great deal on bags in Michael Kors so it was worth it for that! We went to Macys on 34th St (where Miracle on 34th St was filmed), Century 21 (similar to TK Maxx), Apple (surprise surprise) and then the usual shops we have here like Zara and H&M. 

So that's it for this post! I absolutely LOVED New York and hopefully you enjoyed reading this post! Would love to know what other type of posts you'd like to read so I can start writing some more!