This week we are traveling to celebrate Hubby's 40th Birthday! We'll be spending one day in NYC and the rest of the week in Philadelphia taking a tour of Philly Cheese steaks!
As we descended to Laguardia, Wifey caught a couple good shots of Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty!
At the airport -
Our first goal upon arriving in NYC was to transport from Laguardia over to our hotel, The Conrad just south of central park and hope we were able to get an early check-in. We ended up arriving at the hotel and getting checked in around 11:00 am! Best part of this is that we can now spend the rest of the day touring without our luggage and work backpacks weighing us down!
The view from our hotel room includes a snippet of central park! This hotel was the driving factor for the NYC portion of our trip. We had a free night stay at any Hilton as a credit card perk and wanted to get maximum value from it. So we picked an expensive hotel and booked a night!
Since this trip was really for hubby, we prioritized food experiences and the Statue of Liberty for our day-of-fun, squeezing in other places as we were able and the geography allowed. First stop for what we heard is authentic NYC style pizza was NY Pizza Suprema.
From here we continued south and inquired about touring the Statue of Liberty. To do so we'd need to catch a ferry to Liberty and Ellis Island. We were able to get tickets (we hadn't pre purchased any due to uncertainty about flights being on time and hotel access.) and queued up to board the next ferry. This isn't our line, but the one after us ... SO MANY PEOPLE!
The ferry ride provided ample opportunities to shoot photos of Lady Liberty upon approach.
We did climb up the Statue of Liberty's pedestal but weren't able to get tickets to the crown. Those sell out about 3 months in advance.
The following shots are from the pedestal:
Leaving Liberty Island, we continued on the ferry to visit Ellis Island, enjoying the skyline of Manhattan along the way:
Ellis Island:
On our way back north, we stopped at the Ground zero memorial. Wifey found the notations on the memorial for women and their "unborn child" particularly tear inducing.
Next we made it for sunset at the Empire State Building and then continued onto Times Square! Apparently we took exactly 0 pictures in Times Square
 |
| Sunset from the Empire State Building |
After a brief rest at the hotel, we ventured back out for dinner at Gray's Papaya. Wifey is on a slightly restricted diet so she settled for a virgin pina colada instead of the yummy smelling hot dogs.
   |
Since she missed out on the hotdogs, we also grabbed a quick slice of cheese pizza from the nearest pizza joint to our hotel to-go: |
At the end of the day ... wifey's phone had 5% battery left and we had taken 30K steps per fitbit.
Since we have Hilton Diamond status we each enjoyed a $25 credit at the hotel restaurant which we used Tuesday morning for breakfast. Wifey's pancakes were picture worthy, though no worth paying $25 for in real money. Hubby mostly powered through multiple glasses of juice as part of his $25 continental breakfast.
Post breakfast we headed over to the Moynihan Train Hall to catch an Amtrak down to Philadelphia!
