Sunday after Rylee's graduation Kefford and I had tickets to fly to New York City. We were supposed to be going to England with Kelsey and Brit but because of scheduling conflicts and some other issues that cropped up we backed out of that trip. Kefford had been searching for a car for Avynlea for when she came home off of her mission and all of the best deals he could find were in the East. So we decided to go to New York since neither of us have been, see and explore the city and if he found a car we would cancel our return tickets and drive the car home. Our flights were supposed to leave early Sunday evening but we kept getting notifications of our flight being delayed. We were not too worried because we had a three hour layover in San Francisco but it kept getting more and more delayed. We headed to the boise airport hoping that the flight would stop getting delayed but it kept being pushed back until we realized we were not going to make our second flight. When we finally boarded we thought maybe there was a chance our second flight would delay just a little bit since we were going to miss it by 20 minutes but no such luck. As soon as we landed we got in line to reschedule our flight for early Monday morning and then we found a place to "sleep". I had Kefford ask for some food coupons to be comped since we were inconvenienced and they gave us enough for two meals each. We used one the next morning and got some breakfast sandwiches before we boarded our flight to New York. I was sat next to a girl who struck up a little conversation with me and in doing so learned that she used to live in New York and she was able to to give us some places we should check out and gave us some tips on things to see and do.
When we landed in New York we used our food couple to get some lunch and then we headed outside to wait for our Uber driver. While waiting in line for food I saw a girl carrying a suitcase that was exactly like the one that my mom used to have and that we all grew up using. I talked to her about it and then discreetly took a picture, I really loved seeing it, it brought back so many memories.
Our Uber driver was a little bit of a scary driver the way he maneuvered inn and around the traffic heading into the city and I did get really nervous a couple of times. Luckily we made it safe to our hotel and we were finally in New York City.
Our hotel room was 16 floors up and right after we checked in we went over to the elevator to go up to our room and found a group of a lot of people also waiting for the elevators which were super slow and not really big. I knew it would take a long time to wait for the elevators so I left my suitcase with Kefford and I climbed the 16 floors to our room. I made it to the room about 5 minutes for Kefford got there and I was happy for the little bit of exercise after being on an airplane for so long.
After freshening up we left the room and headed over to Central Park where we rented some electric bikes and rode around the park. It was fun to ride the bikes and see Central Park which I grew up reading so much about. It was nothing like what I pictured but really pretty and peaceful. There were a lot of runners, bikers and walkers on the streets with us going through the park and we had to navigate around a lot of people.
Kefford and I stopped at a pretty spot I the park to check out the views and take some pictures before headed back to turn in our bikes. Once that was done we walked around the city close to our hotel to see some more sites.
We found Hells Kitchen restaurant and Rockefeller Center.
We walked through Times Square which was right next to our Hotel and I was really underwhelmed. It was smaller then I pictured it and not really impressive. I did have to take a picture of the billboards showing Phineas and Ferb for Rylee.
Mallory recommended an ice cream place that she and Joshua ate at and loved so we found it and got some ice cream. We got three different flavors and they were all really good.
It was a good first day of being in New York and so far I have loved everything I had seen and enjoyed being in this big City.