Last month I left on my own to New York to visit a friend of mine for ten days. We spent our first few days in Carmel which I told you everything about in my last post. This post is the second part of the previous one, so if you aren't caught up yet, quickly head over to that post so you are totally up to date. In today's post I'll tell you a bit more about what we did, show you a lot of pictures and there is also a vlog!

The next day, the weather was still the same, which means a lot of rain and a lot of cold wind. We left quite early and headed to Union Square with the subway. We walked all the way back up (aka North) following Broadway. We did some shopping and a lot of walking to end up in an actual theatre to watch the Broadway show 'Wicked'. I've heard of the show before but I didn't know the storyline. We had booked this show earlier in the weekend so this was already on our schedule. I really enjoyed the show and I would recommend going to this show, or any show. Because when you are in New York, it's the one thing you have got to do!

Wednesday the 25th, we had the plan to see a much as possible. On Friday I already had to pack because I was flying back home on Saturday. So we decided to visit Downtown Manhattan and in the late afternoon nip to Brooklyn by walking the Brooklyn Bridge. We took the subway again to Soho and visited Chinatown, Little Italy and Tribeca where we also had lunch. We walked by Ground Zero, Wall Street, the Charging Bull and to the free ferry which dropped us off in Staten Island. We spent about half an hour in Staten Island but there wasn't something we really wanted to see so we took the ferry back to Manhattan. 

The ferry is another thing I suggest if you want to see the Statue of Liberty for free for example. If you sit on the right side of the ferry, it actually passes by the statue pretty close. The pictures I took are obviously zoomed in a bit but I did see Miss Liberty for free. When we arrived back in Manhattan, it was already 4 o'clock and the Brooklyn Bridge was at least an hour walk, which by then it would already be getting dark. An early night in couldn't hurt so we ordered some food to our hostel and watched some movies. We walked all day long every day so the days were getting a bit exhausting.

On Thursday we took the subway straight to Queens. I made a list back at home of the things I wanted to visit and the Louis Armstrong house was one of them. This was the only thing we went to Queens for so we had to fill up our day. Maybe we could try to go to Brooklyn again? The Louis Armstrong house is a great thing to visit if you are interested in either interiors or architecture, or if you liked his music or music in general. The tour guide knows a lot about the man and his family as well as his career and the house. There weren't any other visitors besides us so it was really nice and kind of a personal tour. I wasn't allowed to take any pictures but here are some I found some of his bathroom and kitchen on the internet.

After the tour we went to a grocery store to buy some food to eat on our way to Brooklyn. We decided to walk which would take around three hours. Along our walk we passed by a building called 'The House of Mystery'. It looked mysterious and we saw some people entering. We found out that you could visit for free and test out the new Snapchat Spectacles so we did. The spectacles didn't work for me so I just visited the exhibition without them. The exhibition wasn't that spectacular, it was just a few rooms with some optical illusions and 'magical' things. I don't know how to describe it in another way haha. But after this coincidence, we went back on route to walk to Brooklyn. We quickly gave up and took the first subway we saw back to our hostel. This was only around 6 o'clock. We did walk all the way to Brooklyn because we couldn't find any subway signs around. This day we walked for almost 17km and we didn't do much besides that...

The last day of the week, the last full day I got to enjoy New York, we went straight to Brooklyn. I definitely had to visit Brooklyn for the one time I'm in New York so we took the subway to the Brooklyn Bridge to walk to Dumbo and Brooklyn Heights afterwards. We spent most of our day in Brooklyn and had lunch in 'Le Pain Quotidien'. 

To finish off my week, we went to the Rockefeller Centre to visit Top of the Rock. The view from the top of this building is the most beautiful thing I saw this entire week. Again a must visit when you are in New York. Jennifer allready went to the top of Rockefeller Centre and saw New York by night. I didn't want to wait until it became dark so I went all the way up by myself which cost me 34 dollars, the only money I had left. We had our last dinner together in 'Europa Café', a restaurant/diner where you can assemble your dish yourself and are located all over Times Square. 

Saturday was my very last day, the day where I would fly back home. We didn't really plan anything else on this day, but I wanted to see one thing I hadn't seen before and if you love architecture, you'll know the Guggenheim museum. This was the very last thing on my list of must-sees so we went for a walk through Central Park until the Guggenheim. I didn't have any money left to actually visit the museum but I'm glad I got to see it. Afterwards we went back to the cosy coffee bar where we went to on our first day and had my last coffee in New York. After lunch I had to say goodbye to Jennifer and took a shuttle bus to JFK which I had already booked the day before. 

Whilst typing this post, I happily looked back on this tiny adventure for me. I would have never thought that I would ever go to New York and to finally have been there is a real milestone in my life. I hope to go back someday, maybe not by myself  but with a family of my own. I hope you enjoyed these two blog posts and that this maybe helped you in your own travel plans to New York. If you have any questions about anything, you can always leave your questions down below in the comments. Also don't forget to watch both my vlogs on my YouTube channel or the second vlog that goes along with this post down below. Thanks for reading! 

- xoxo -

Chiara