For months, hubby and I were planning a trip to the Big Ol' Apple. It was a combination birthday and graduation gift for me, and just a week before hubby's birthday, too. He'd been several times before growing up, because he has family there. We were lucky enough to actually stay at his aunt's house while we were there (thank God, those accommodations are insanely high). This was my first time north of North Carolina.


I really wanted to catch The Cursed Child, but the tickets were a bit too pricey (especially with it being a two-parter). And it hurt my heart a bit to walk past a few times without getting to go inside. But it's a good thing we didn't buy the tickets.






Keep going - this gets good.


Our flight was supposed to leave Thursday around noon, but was cancelled (fairly quickly, I must add). After a Lyft ride back home and a drive back the next morning, we had to hop on a plane from Atlanta to Dallas, then Dallas to New York. We ended up getting to NYC an entire 24 hours later than we were originally supposed to.


Anyways, I usually create some kind of list of things to do and have a kind of general plan of where our trip may lead us. This time, in an effort to be more spontaneous, we didn't make a plan at all. Spoiler: New York is not the place to not have a plan.


We had about 48 hours in New York (midday Friday to midday Sunday) and we were staying in East Queens, so I wouldn't say it was a typical NYC trip. But I didn't realize how huge New York was, and we hit some of the main tourist spots.


We did a ton of walking, so I wore a killer pair of Pumas the entire trip, and switched between the best pair of BooHoo shorts I got from Poshmark, and my favorite Target denim dress. The temps were pretty toasty during the day, but got a bit chilly in the evenings. It was totally different than summer in the South.




Friday, our first stop was to get some Jamaican food. A little later, we bought ice cream from a real, live ice cream truck - music and all. That night, we hit Times Square just for a looky-loo. Nothing major. We didn't even go in anywhere (except Walgreen's to get some waters). We road public transit a lot. From Queens, we would take the Long Island Railroad to Penn Station, then hop on a Subway. We ended up snagging some pizza from Rose's in Penn Station, and it was honestly delicious.










Saturday, my MIL (who was also visiting her sister in NY) tagged along. We ventured to the American Museum of Natural History, which was everything I ever dreamed it would be. I truthfully teared up at all the dinosaurs. It makes me emotional to even think about it. We also walked into Central Park, but just momentarily. Again, everything is so much bigger than I expected. We ended up going back to the house and ordering in Chinese.





















Sunday, we headed out to the bodega for breakfast (I got a chopped cheese, total not-breakfast food). Next we loaded up our things and took on stroll down Jamaica Avenue for a bit of shopping before we got back to the airport.








We had a ton of fun. It was wonderful getting to vacation and spend time with Andre's family. I hated all these transportation issues we ran into (in addition to our flight there, one of the LIRR trains had an hour delay, and our flight back was delayed, as well). I'm so glad to have experienced New York, even on a smaller scale. I would love to go back, with more time and more of a plan.