8. Go to New York!

I arrived in New York City the day before my birthday so I just managed to tick this off my 25 before 25 list!

Classic New York City view from our hotel

We had a bit of a whirlwind weekend in New York for my Birthday. We arrived on Friday afternoon, my flight arrived first so I just sat waiting the carousel where his luggage was going to show up. He found me sitting, surrounded by my luggage, translating my German gossip magazine. After that we made our way (with help from the airport info personnel) to the Supershuttle desk and booked a shuttle to our hotel. The wait was about 30 minutes so we grabbed something to eat in the airport.

When we arrived at the Wellington hotel the woman behind the desk couldn't find our reservation, and we went trawling through our emails to find our reservation confirmation email. As it dawned on us that neither of us had booked the hotel, we started to wonder where we would be sleeping that night. As it turned out the woman behind the counter just smiled nicely and said "it happens all the time, let's see what we can do for you" and she booked us into the same kind of room we had originally thought about booking, at a cheaper rate, and with free wifi! It turns out there is an abundance of accommodation in New York City, and if our hotel had been booked there are even apps that, if you are daring enough to leave your accommodation organization to the last minute, will get you awesome deals at hotels trying to fill up their empty rooms at a lower rate. Thankfully we didn't need it though!

It was late in the afternoon already so we dropped our bags in our room, freshened up, and took to the streets! We went straight to Broadway to wander up the street towards Times Square. When we got there we had a quick look at the night's show timetable, we hadn't booked in advance, thinking that you can get cheap tickets a few hours before the show, mainly due to my experience doing that in London. When we asked about tickets to Jersey Boys they said that we could get tickets, but not seated together. We weren't okay with that, we had just been reunited, so nothing was going to convince us to sit apart for an extended period of time. Instead we went to Dinner at a burger joint, I LOVE American burgers, they are just awesome! I swear every other time we ate out I ordered a burger. It was also at this point when I noticed that everytime we went into a store or went to buy something I was still figuring out how to do the transaction in German in my head, only to be surprised when the cashiers would speak to me in English! It's weird how long it takes you to get used to some things! Then we wandered down to Central Park, contemplated going on a night bus tour, but decided to head home and try to catch my parents before sleeping. We had both had early flights and time zone changes so we thought making it until 9pm was a respectable effort!

Early morning walk in Times Square

In the morning I woke up first, it was apparent that it was going to take more than kisses, a smiling face, and several cheery good mornings to get my Love out of bed. I wandered alone down to Times Square to see what it looks like at 7am on a Saturday morning. I shared the street with a few runners, and several garbage trucks and garbage men. Times Square was empty, I'm not really sure what all the fuss is about Times Square, is it just all the people in one place? I then made my way to a coffee/breakfast place, picked up some donuts and bagels, and of course coffee! When they asked me what type of milk I wanted in my coffee I made the mistake of answering with "just normal milk please". This was followed by "we have full, half, soy, goat, almond ...." The barrister listed off seven different kinds of milk! Now that I'm writing this out it seems like a pretty dorky thing to be wowed by, "I went to NYC and couldn't pick which milk to get in my coffee because the choices overwhelmed me!". I should really get out more.

Anyway, after the exciting milk-choice adventure, I made my way back to the hotel, as the smell of coffee reached his nostrils my Love began to wake up and wish me a Happy Birthday! We skyped my parents and I opened my presents while we had our breakfast.

Then we got into our running gears and went for a run in Central Park. There were so many runners there! The only time I've felt so crowded whilst running was in the We Own the Night race held in Berlin by Nike. We just so happened to arrive in NYC in the middle of a freakish heatwave, my Love, who is now very used to the Californian climate, was not in the least fazed by the heat. In comparison I struggled through until my face seemed as though it was attempting to out-warm the sun! I'm one of those get-up-at-six-AM-to-avoid-the-heat kinda runners. It didn't serve me well on this particular run! We ran for about 4km and then wandered the paths of the park until we found ourselves back where we started. On the walk back to the hotel we saw our first street-corner-crazy-shouter. He was shouting about prostitution, and how lax the police are in that area.

Some street art in Williamsburg

Then we jumped in the shower dressed up in the most hipster gears we had brought with us, and caught the subway to Williamsburg! The thing about us, is that we don't really do a whole lot of research about where we are going, so we just picked a subway stop in the middle of Williamsburg and went there. It didn't look like much, and we wondered if we had come to the wrong area of Williamsburg, or if there was a specific spot for Hipster-watching that we should have researched beforehand. We eventually stumbled across a cafe/restaurant with a sign outside that had 'free love' scrawled across the bottom, so we decided to take a chance. 

Lunch time in Williamsburg

We sat down and ordered drinks, I decided to branch out and order a cocktail, my Love ordered a beer, when the beer arrived in a mason jar we decided that we were in the right place, and then a crew of mustachioed, suspender-wearing hipsters arrived for a late brunch. We both ordered a pulled pork sandwich and got apple pie and crême brûlée for  dessert. Then we just wandered the neighborhood for a bit and made our way back to the hotel to get ready for the wedding!

Some friends of ours are having 52 weddings, so that instead of one big wedding during which they might be pulled in 100 different directions and barely get any quality time with anyone, they will have 52 small weddings, in which they can spend the whole evening catching up with one particular couple or friend group. We managed to find their Manhattan apartment, the view from the 44th floor is pretty fantastic. We caught up over hors d'œrves and fancy wine and champagne. They showed us their home, we were particularly impressed by the banjo displayed on the wall that used to belong to Neutral Milk Hotel. Then came the vows, I played officiant and only mixed up the words once! It was lovely, my Love and I are particularly mushy over weddings at the moment, though neither of us can be bothered planning ours, we are enjoying watching other people take the plunge!

Manhattan from the 44th floor

Then we took an uber! The driver dropped us off at Kiwiana, a New Zealand restaurant in Brooklyn. We started with a Pinot Noir, the Central Otago ones were pretty pricey, so we had to go for a Hawkes Bay one. We ordered a variety of starters including the green-lipped mussels, ceviche, tater tots, and something else that slips my mind.

Then we ordered an Epic beer each and split a main between each pair, my Love and I had the ribs glazed with manuka honey and marmite. They were the most delicious ribs I have eaten in my life! Once we had eaten our dinner the chef came out to chat with us, as it turned out he was from my home town. Our friends asked which desserts he recommended to which he replied "leave it to me". Shortly after that he sent out the pavlova, the milo cake, and two off-menu desserts: a sticky date pudding, and a lamington. He also sent us out some complimentary champagne as a congrats on the wedding and me turning 25.

Then we went on a tour of several Manhattan dive-bars. We tried Pabst Blue Ribbon, the men played a game of pool, which ended in my Love returning, looking pretty chuffed, saying "turns out I'm pretty good at pool!". Eventually we found ourselves wandering back to the Hotel through Times Square at 5 AM, agreeing that it was a fantastic evening but we probably don't need to go bar hopping for a long time now! We woke up in time to book a shuttle to the airport and have something to eat and drink before we left. We were the first people on the super shuttle which means you have approximately one hour of dicking around, picking up other people, before you even start heading to the airport. Our hangovers thankfully weren't that bad, I had been drinking lots of water in between all of the wine, beer, and whatever else we drank. We made it successfully to the airport with plenty of time. At the airport we ate at a Taqueria and bought some postcards, then off we flew, home to California.

New York is wild, I'd love to go and spend a week there, but not for a while I think, I'm all New Yorked out for now! Plus there are so many other places I want to see before re-doing NYC!