Today I am linking up with Holly & Sarah to share the first part of my quick New York City trip. It looks like several of us bloggers were all there over last week/weekend!
I booked our hotel back in April and the flights in May, so this has been on the books for 7 months. This was my oldest's 5th trip to NYC and my youngests 3rd trip. I have been well over 20 times I bet in my lifetime. My first job out of college was with Delta Air Lines and then I worked in travel for many years, so I use to have lots of travel perks. I would go once a year for a long time. The last time I went at Christmas time was probably close to 30 years ago. My girls had never been at Christmas and I wanted to show them all the lights. Since we have all been before, our goal was to do Christmas things, and not really other tourist things. Some of this decision was based on the short time we had, so our schedule had a few timed events, but otherwise, I wanted to keep it free so we could explore.
So, here we go with a recap of day one!
We left home at 4:30 for an early morning flight, which ended up being delayed by an hour. We flew into LaGuardia, which has recently had a face lift to the Delta terminal, which was so nice.
We waited about 30 minutes on Isabella to arrive on her flight and then we took a taxi to Manhattan.
We stayed at the Holiday Inn on 8th Avenue. It was a few blocks south from where I would normally stay, but it was still good. Hotels are so, so expensive in NYC by my standards & this one fit our budget. The room was small, but most are in NYC, but it was clean. One tip, I did read reviews a few days prior. When you read reviews, you get a little good and bad. One negative comment I read though actually helped me. Like other hotels in big cities, you often have to wait on an elevator. That was feedback on this hotel, so I was able to request a room on a lower floor. We were on floor 2 out of 36 which worked out great that we took the stairs as we came and went.
After setting down our things, we headed to Shake Shack for lunch.
We left there and headed for Macy's, the largest store in the USA and second largest in the world. It is also famous for the Christmas movie, Miracle on 34th Street & the "stage" for the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade at Herald Square. Before even entering, the window displays are elaborate!
This window allowed you to take a photo and see yourself in the display.
Inside, the decor is beautiful!!
They also have a display inside with a tribute to Miracle on 34th Street. These are the original windows from outside the store when the movie aired.
The store also has these cool wooden escalators!
We walked from there to see the Rockefeller Tree at night. We saw it a few other times in the daytime as well, but here were our first glances...
In the background is the light show to music on the building of Saks Fifth Avenue that happens every 10 minutes
Since we had a late lunch this day, we stopped by Chick-fil-A on the way back to the hotel to get a drink. I had a few snacks in the room, but we were all so tired after an early start to our day and already lots of walking. We went to bed early this day to be ready for day 2!
Stay tuned for part 2 & 3....
Thanks for reading along & Happy Monday!
