It was day 3 in New York and we thought we had done enough walking, but little did we know we were only just getting started. We began our day as usual hopping on the subway and heading for our first location which was The Museum of the City of New York. Mum had been recommended this museum by a friend and we had been told that it was free. Well after walking through what felt like the roughest part of New York yet, we finally found it. My brother actually thought we were being herded into a dead end as a lot of the “locals” kept asking us where we were going and sending us down strange roads – anyway we made it. The seven of us walked in and to my horror there was an $18 entry fee, suggested donation. Well I didn’t even want to go to the museum so I said I would rather not pay and head over to central park over the road but mum chose to donate $10 per person and in we went. At the beginning we watched a video about New York and how it all came about and to be honest it was quite interesting. I had a coughing fit half way through whilst sitting on the front row which wasn’t fun.
The museum itself was ok. I’ll be honest it wasn’t really for me. I am sure if you’re into that kind of thing and wanting to learn then you’d love it but I just didn’t find it very interesting. It's like going to a museum about Norwich, I can't imagine many people living outside of the area would find it hugely interesting. We spent just over an hour here I would say then left and made our way to Central Park. When we first walked into central park, I noticed how ‘dead’ everything was. There were no leaves on the trees, the grass was fenced off and re-growing and there were no flowers. I don’t know what I expected but it just didn’t give me that ‘wow’ factor that is has on the films. I really enjoyed visiting Strawberry Fields, dedicated to the late John Lennon. The atmosphere was nice here, people crowded around a man with a guitar singing ‘Imagine’, lots of floral tributes and a good crowd.
Don’t get me wrong, the park was big but I expected it to be bigger. I pictured myself sitting in the middle and feeling lost in this wonderful paradise when in reality you can see the buildings all around you. I think it would be lovely to visit here in the summer, I imagine it really comes to life then. We walked around the reservoir and the sun was shining. I noticed a lot of runners about, this is a great place to get your fitness in!
We saw many bridges, but none of them were the one my mum actually wanted to find. She wanted to see the ‘Home Alone’ bridge. I’ve never really seen the film so no idea what she is on about there. I did however snap a photo of this funky looking bridge which coincidentally I then saw on the Will Smith film Collateral Beauty a couple of days later. Weird huh?
A trip to Central Park would not have been complete without having a hot dog. I only saw a couple of stalls, probably due to the cold weather so picked the closest and went for a large hotdog (which wasn’t that big) for $4. It was what you would expect from a tiny hotdog stall but it did the trick!
After our hotdogs we went to the next museum on our list, The Museum of Modern Art. I was mainly excited to go here as a Gossip Girl fan, as the stairs leading to the entrance are the stairs that feature on the lunch breaks of the upper east side girls! Me and Phoebe were so excited, we posed, we XOXO’d and we loved it. This museum was a lot larger than the last one. We spent around an hour here as we had things to do but barely scratched the surface. It’s worth mentioning that the reason we visited all of these museums was because we bought a City Pass. For just over £100, this booklet is full of tickets to some of the most popular attractions so it saved us the cost when we were out there.
The final museum we visited was by far my favourite, the Museum of Natural History. You may have seen this museum on the film ‘night at the museum’ and I was keen to find ‘Dum Dum’. Our tickets included the space show so we watched that first which was interesting until I decided to have a nap but everyone else said it was good. We arrived quite late so they had started to close off some of the exhibitions which was a bit annoying but not much we could do about that. I was on my mission to fond Dum Dum. All of the maps had ran out so I ended up grabbing a Japanese one and having no idea where we were going. Eventually I found Dum Dum! I was so happy. The museum is really big, we didn’t quite get to see everything but I saw some dinosaurs and animals so I was happy by the end of it. James bought me a beautiful heart shaped stone in the gift shop.
When we left the museum we decided to get some food near Times Square. We opted for Dallas BBQ, it looked good and had a big queue outside which is usually a good sign. The queue went down pretty quickly and we were soon seated in a booth. I ordered chicken and ribs with fries which also came with a massive slice of some corn cake which tasted like Victoria sponge which was ever so slightly random but in the end not too bad. I left suitably stuffed and by this time it had started to get dark so we checked out Times Square at night, which was a lot more exciting than seeing it in the day! It was here I got my selfie with an NYPD cop, a must for a tourist like me!
Finally we headed to the top of the rock. The queue looked pretty big but it turns out as we already had tickets in our city pass we could jump the queue and go straight in. We were up within minutes! I knew that I wanted to do one building at night and one during the day, I didn’t care which – they both had breath-taking views. It was lovely to see Central Park in the dark, being so high up was just amazing if not a little scary. I definitely recommend going all the way to the top as there are no glass/plastic barriers getting in the way of your photos. I even saw a live proposal up here! Aww!
I grabbed some goodies from the gift shop and made my way back down the elevator, which was really cool and had a glass ceiling so you could see the lift shaft as you went down. My ears popped annoyingly, but I had a great time in the end. We got on our subway and headed home, got back about midnight!
Once again, I vlogged the day and you can see this below.
