A Day in the Big Apple

***So I have lots and lots of catching up to do. This week was our first week of school and work. We're basically moved in. Everything is great. But before I go into detail about our return to Provo, I NEED to finish documenting the rest of our summer...because it was awesome :)***

On our way to Delaware from Massachusetts, we stopped in New York City. Blaine lives TWO HOURS away and HAS NEVER BEEN (except for once on a field trip in like 7th grade -_- which, in my book, doesn't count). I've only been once before with my friend Andrea and her family. And I liked it a lot. Andrea is actually living in NYC now. So it was good to stop by and stay with her. Our stay was way too short, but we actually hit a lot of the touristy free spots in the day we were there (thanks to Andrea's expertise).

When we got there, Blaine and I walked around Time Square. Blaine couldn't believe the amount of people that were there. He kept on saying "It's a Wednesday, after a big holiday. There shouldn't be this many people!" (4th of July was a week before we got there). Honestly, I didn't think it was too bad. I like people. I like big cities! Anyway, we walked all over the place. We encountered the world's largest department store, Macy's, and went inside. It was so overwhelming but also awesome. I feel like you can go there and always find exactly what you're looking for. They have a whole floor devoted to women's shoes. Crazy. They had 3 Starbucks and dozens of restaurants. After that, we went to 5th Ave and looked around all the fancy stores.

Picture doesn't do it justice. 1st floor of Macy's

We finally met up with Andrea and she took us on a quick tour of basically the whole city. We took Blaine to the financial district so that he would see the New York Stock Exchange and Wallstreet. So much of what he studies in the business school happens there. He really liked it!

Afterwards, we headed to the Brooklyn Bridge. It was really cool. I loved it. And there was this little area with benches overlooking it with the city skyline in the background and it was just so soothing and beautiful. After walking the Brooklyn Bridge, we ate at Grimaldi's Pizzeria. It has been around forever and used to be right under the Brooklyn Bridge. Now it's just close to it. But anyway, it's a legend. They claim that they're the ones who made the Brooklyn Bridge famous. Frank Sinatra would order pizza from Grimaldi's and have it delivered all the way to L.A. or wherever he was at the time. Crazy!

City skylines make my heart skip a beat. 

The next day, we walked around Central Park. Again, very beautiful and relaxing. We saw the Bethesda Fountain, the Belvedere Castle and Shakespeare Garden. I wish I were there for all the cool film festivals and 5ks!

After Central Park, Andrea guided us to the LDS temple in Manhattan. We didn't go inside but it was so cool to see a temple right in the middle of a big city! Also, we really didn't know where we were going. Before we even realized that we were on temple grounds (city sidewalk), we both felt this overwhelming feeling of peace. We looked up and bam, angel Moroni was there. It was a neat experience and a feeling you can only get from being close to a temple!

For lunch, we headed to China Town for some legit Chinese food. I had the best miso soup ever. So good. We also walked through Little Italy, which is right next to China Town. I didn't notice that it was so close to each other before! Oh, and we rode a taxi there. I thought it was cool :)

We walked around some more and finally had dessert at Juniors. They are famous for their cheesecake. It was really good, but nothing out of this world.

So that was the end of our little trip to NYC. There is so much to do. I feel like you could live there and never run out of cool things to do! I was so bummed that we didn't get to see a Broadway show, but next time we will for sure!

But my favorite part of the trip was seeing Andrea again. It was so good to see her in her new life and catch up with her. I'm so glad that she's pursuing her dreams!

Hopefully, we'll be back sooner than later. Now that I've actually made the drive from Delaware to NYC and have internalized how close it really is, for sure we will be going back! :)