Tuesdays in Manhattan

Top of the mornin' to ya!

I am waking up today with  the most incredible view of a city. The 33rd floor of The New Yorker hotel, at 8am, with a corner view room, of the Chrysler building and the Hudson river. Three windows, one of which you can heva e view lying in the bed, another one sitting down at the desk at which I am writing this and another one from the bed as well as from the desk and sofa. Yes, we've also got a sofa. 

When arriving here, we have had the luck of coming across of what I can only call "the nicest hotel lady", called Rayvonne. I remember her name because the amount of times we have had to go back to the reception and try some more nice rooms. 

We initially booked a "Metro" room at the hotel and despite Rayvonne's suggestion to upgrade to  nicer room for an extra charge, we said we are ok. Then we went up and saw the initial room. At the 23rd floor, with a view of the back of a building taller than ours and in between some more walls, the smallest room of them all appeared like a haunted cave. 

Then we went down to see what they have to offer for an upgrade. Got 2 rooms, one with a view of the Hudson river and one with a view of the Empire State Building. But none of them seemed ok. P. went downstairs to speak to the hotel lady again and work his charm. Not sure exactly how much charming he had to do and I honestly do not care because he came back with the key to this fantastic corner view room that is apparently for disabled people and twice the size of the rooms seen previously, with twice the views, for the same price! Just an extra charge that we thought would be saved just because the room had a fridge and we would be able to save on breakfast and lunch sandwiches. P had delivered an amazing room, I was so happy!

So we settled in, had some food shopping done, bought a 7 day subway pass - Metro card and after a walk in Times Square that is extremely close to the hotel and a late night (10:30 in the US time, but 3:30am in the UK time) pizza that was the most delicious pizza I have ever eaten, we decided to go to sleep after our first day of the trip and 21h of doing things. 

We woke up Monday to these fantastic views, A bit late, but we needed a lie in cause we were shattered and our trip was just starting. So, at around 11:30 we left the room and decided to follow the home-made plan of what we were going to do on a daily basis. We had Ground Zero, Wall Street, Staten Island, Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty planned. 

The moment we got to Ground Zero, we were caught in the most torrential downpour ever. We took shelter, stuck with ideas what to do or the possibility to d anything cause we didnt have a tube map or a NYC map. We needed to change our outdoor plans to indoor plans. 

Eveentualy, after the rain settled in, we ran back into the tube station and decided to go to the MET. We got into the subway and by the time we got ehere, the ran stopped. Which was nice, cause we had a bit of a walk from 77th stop to the actual building. Which was closed on a monday! What an epic fail. We did remember that either Guggenheim or MOMA museums (that were on our lit of to do) were close by and because we had already purchased tickets  to these through the New York City Pass, we had their addresses. 

We were right and Guggenheim was open. It was all so .... white and the shapes and the light... It was magical. The rotunda with all the paintings exposed, what a great idea for a layout for a museum. We saw paintings from Van Gogh, Monet, Picasso, Rousseau and many many more, whose name I don't remember but their paintings stayed in my head. There was also an exhibition of an artist called, a photography and video artist, which documented people's lives through change by taking very majestic photos of them, in the same background, throughout the years. 

I was sad to leave such an inspiring place, but next up was Central Park, since we were only across the road from it and we needed a rest. We had "linner" (lunch+dinner) with a spectacular view of the city in Central Park. 

We then had another tiring walk and saw a Turtle Pond, which was literally filled with turtles and brought such excitement to P that he didn't even what to do with all that emotion. 

Finally, we went back home for a rest, then decided to needed to pace ourselves and after a rest, we went across the street to a pizza place called "Famiglia", which is "New York's favourite pizza" (Registered mark!!). They had some amazing videos of what they can do with they pizza dough and all the famous people they had in. We had to have an 18'' pizza which was absolutely huge and we couldn't finish it. After all of that, we called it a night. 

It still all seems unreal to me. All those times when watching Americam films, all those times when I said I wish I'd be there and it seemed so far away and so impossible due to my visa limitations, that now, living it, seems like if you pinch me, it will all disappear before my eyes.