From Cold Spring to a Brooklyn Engagement

After four days in a big city, Bradley and I were keen to get away from the crowds for a few hours and head up North a wee bit to a tiny town called Cold Spring.

It's about an hour and a half on the train, and on the way we went through lots of lovely looking towns with interesting names like Garrison, Manitou, Peekskill, Sleepy Hollow(!) and my favourite Tarrytown.

It would have been nice to hire a car and stop off at all these towns, but we didn't really want to hire a car for only half a day, so the train it was!

Musical Piano's and the 9/11 Memorial

We'd had so much luck with the weather so far in New York, but the weather for our fourth day in the city was forecast for rain and strong winds.

And that's exactly what we woke up to. Torrential rain and winds strong enough that Bradley had to hold onto me as we left the hotel room.

Luckily it wasn't actually that cold, it was still pretty warm and humid, which was good since there's nothing worse than having to wear jeans when it's raining, and then walking around with heavy damp legs! Shorts are far preferable as even though your legs get wet, they dry super fast.

Views across the Big Apple

After another huge breakfast at the hotel, trying to be a bit healthier, with scrambled eggs and toast, rather than doughnut's and waffle's, we headed straight for Rockefeller Plaza to go up to Top of the Rock, hoping that it wasn't as busy as the night before.

New York State of Mind

We woke up early the next day to a huge American breakfast courtesy of our hotel. We had sugary cereals, eggs, waffles and coffee.

After fueling up for the day we headed down to the Long Island City waterfront to get a proper view of Manhattan. Long Island City is mostly an industrial area, so the walk was pretty uninteresting, but it was worth it for the great views we got of the city. We also stopped for a while to watch a baseball game and some Tai Chi, and then continued on to the Metro station towards Times Square.

Autumn in New York

After spending the last couple of years travelling around Europe and the United Kingdom, we have become quite eager recently for a change of scenery.

After my sister Kylie told me she was planning on going to New York in July of this year, we completely copied her idea and planned our own trip to the Big Apple for September.

We arrived at JFK after a 7 hour flight from London, the longest flight we've taken since leaving New Zealand in 2010. We flew Virgin Atlantic, and I have to say it was a pretty good flight. The food and entertainment were both good, and we arrived in America feeling pretty good.

The only downside was the size of the queues for Customs at JFK, we ended up waiting for almost an hour before we were able to get out of the airport.

We caught the Metro to our hotel in Long Island City, not in Manhattan itself. Long Island City has recently had a big boom in hotels popping up, and while it is still mostly an industrial area, it's only two stops from Times Square on the Metro and hotel prices are much cheaper than in Manhattan.