New York State Of Mind........

New York City is a beautiful city and I have had the privilege of taking 2 separate vacations there.

The first time I went was in the summer. My trip was originally suppose to be a 3 1/2 day trip but due to a tornado in New York (yes a tornado) my flight was delayed until the next afternoon giving me 48 hours in New York. New York can be seen in 48 hours, just don't plan on getting any sleep.
The second time I went was in fall. I loved it even more in fall and I got to spent 4 days on that trip.

Length of trip
It really depends on what you want to do and where you want to stay but you can do New York in 48 hours or you can spend a week. It is really up to what your plans on and everything that you would want to see.
In 48 hours I: Went to MOMA (Museum of Modern Art), Time Square, Yankees Game (they played the Red Sox), Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island, Financial District, World Trade Center Memorial, NBC Studios, SpiderMan play, 5th Avenue, and ate at a restaurant famous for being frequented by Sinatra (Patsy's). So you can do it all or at least most of it in that time frame.

In 4 days I got to experience a lot more of New York. I did everything again on my second trip besides the Yankee Game and MOMA but I also did a lot more. I got to see and walk through Central Park, Little Italy, China Town, Grand Central Station, Washington Square Park, The Today Show, and saw a play with Nathan Lane, and ate at a lot more places!


Best place to stay
On my first trip I stayed in Time Square, which was great but also expensive. The second time I stayed in Chelsea which was out of the way but also let us explore that part of New York without all the crowds.
My advice to be to find a place the is in your price range and also around most of the things you want to see with subway access. After all you are only in your hotel room to sleep and change.
If you want to be adventurous in your hotel, go up to the top floor and go on the roof if you can. We snuck up on our roof and had the best pictures of New York along with a fun story.

Times to go to attractions 
The best advice I can give is to do upper New York City on the first part of your trip. That part is always busy and it really doesn't matter when you go there will always be people. However try to plan your trip to where you are there on a Sunday. Do the Statue of Liberty and Financial District on Sunday morning. There will not be a line at the Statue of Liberty and they you can walk to the financial district and just walk around because not very many people will be there. The market is closed and everyone is at Church. One of the oldest churches is on Wall Street and its a beautiful site. It is also the site where they stationed first responders and set up a command post during 9/11.
Also the best time to see the Empire State Building is at 2am, there are no lines and the city is beautiful at night.

Hidden local attractions
One of the best Italian restaurants that I have eaten at is IL CORTILE in Little Italy. We stumbled upon this restaurant in the middle of an Italian street fair! The street fairs are so much fun and you will always eat way too much.
One of the oldest bars in New York that still fully operate today is a couple blocks away from Washington park. McSorley's Old Ale House. I don't think it has changed much since it opened in 1854 (with the exception of indoor plumbing).
One bar that inspired a popular TV show called "How I Met Your Mother" is called McGee's. If you are a fan of the show you defiantly want to stop by for a cold one. They have the show memorabilia everywhere.
If you are in the mood for a broadway show and comedy act even after you got through with a broadway show, go down the street to Don't Tell Mama. The bartenders and waitstaff perform their monologues,music acts, and comedy performance for the audience. Its a fun time just make sure you tip your waitress. :)
There is also a great burger joint in the back of a really fancy hotel on the upper west side. I can't exactly remember how to get to it but if you want to try it, let me know and I'll ask the group I was with to help me remember.

One more piece of advice
Take the subway and eat bagels! Buy a subway card and put $20 on it and add more if you need it. The subway is a great way to get around new york with a fairly cheap price. Also, New York City has some of the best bagels you will ever eat! Stop by bagel stands every morning for breakfast.

What you need to know about your first cruise

We went on our first cruise for our honeymoon. We left out of the Port of Miami and went to Half Moon Cay (a carnival private island), St. Thomas, San Jan Puerto Rico, and Grand Turk.

The first thing you need to be aware of when you go on a cruise is: You are on their time, they do not wait for anyone. With this being said I would recommend getting to your port city the day before just in case you have flight delays. We had a flight delay so I am glad we decided to get in a couple days before to extend our vacation.
When you print off your cruise documents (do this ahead of time, it saves you a lot of time), you will have a scheduled time to board. Don't worry about that time, our boarding time was at 1pm, we ended up getting there around 11:30 and getting on board way before our scheduled time. It doesn't hurt to get there early and beat the big crowds. Once you get on board your cruise starts! So you might as well get there early to start eating, drinking, and exploring!
Know what time your cruise ship leaves port and get a good seat! If you wait until the last minute like we did on finding a spot for departure, you don't end up with a great heading off picture, but we still loved it.

Drinking
If you and and the person you are traveling with like to drink then you might want to look into buying the drink package. We looked into it and bought one. We figured out that we would each need to drink 6 drinks a day each day of the cruise to make the package worth while. We made that goal once! We added up the total drinks at the end of our trip and we would've been better off paying as we went for drinks. There is so much stuff to do and see on a cruise its hard to drink the whole time.
They do have drink packages for pop drinkers and that is worth it if you drink pop at all. We had pop and juice in our alcohol package but we found out they only gave cans of pop to the people who purchased the pop drink package.

Packing
If you are like me you are a heavy packer, which is fine. You can take as many bags as you want on board, but just make sure you can take all of them off on your own. You can get off the ship faster if you take your own bags off the ship. That is pretty important information, especially if you have a flight before noon. But here are a few things to pack that you might not think of ahead of time and some other fun facts:
-Medication (aspirin/pepto/tums/bandaids/etc) they do have all of this on the ship but it is all ridiculously expensive. I ended up getting a sinus infection while on the cruise and I paid $5 for a small pack of throat lozenges which was worth it but I didn't want to pay almost $30 for NyQuil.
-Small bills/tipping money. Even though it says that you paid all "gratuities" it is still customary to tip on the ship. You will have someone who cleans your stateroom twice a day! We tipped them a couple dollars a day along with candy and left a big tip when we left because they took such good care of us. Also the last formal night is when it is customary to tip your waiter/waitress for dinner. They are great and you tend to set in a section where you really like your waiter/waitress for the whole cruise.
-Book the Balcony room, its worth it! The balcony rooms are bigger than the inner rooms of the ship and they have a great view! It was nice being able to sit and watch as we pulled into port in the comfort of our private balcony. You can also order room service and have coffee and sit on your balcony and just take in the view.
-Don't bring beach towels. The cruise ship provides beach towels for your to use on and off the ship.
-Bring a wrist watch. You are on the ships time, so if you set your watch to the ships time you will always be on time for shows, events, and leaving port.
-Don't waste your money on wifi. You are on vacation, the great thing about a cruise ship is to get away. They have wifi hotspots on the ship just in case you need to check in with the rest of the world. Also, phone carriers offer a travel option on your plan to purchase right before your trip if you need to call home and not get charged an outrageous amount for it.
-Power strip, they don't always have a lot of power outlets in the rooms so it helps to bring a power strip.
-Wrinkle free release spray. They don't have irons in your room on the ship, so it's a great idea to bring a couple travel size bottles of this for your clothes that you have stuffed in your luggage.

Ports
Do research on your ports before you cruise. We did not buy any excursions, we made our own. We went everywhere we wanted to and did almost everything that was offered in the excursion packages for half the cost. The main reason cruise ships push their excursions is that the cruise ship won't leave you if a ship excursion is late for the ship. However, if you are off doing your own thing and the ship is ready to leave, it will leave. Just make sure you keep track of when your ship is scheduled to leave and get on board at least 30 minutes prior to departure just in case.
We will book an excursion next time if we go to a place with a rain forest. That is the only thing we didn't get to do in Puerto Rico. (We were fixing to go on a local rain forest trip but I had a panic attach so we didn't go. I was worried the ship would leave us.)
Another good thing about making your own excursions is you get to have the locals view of the island. We booked an island guide right off the ship in St. Martin and he took us to some great places!

The Shows
Cruise ships have a lot to offer as far as entertainment. They have live shows every night. They also have different things during the day for the cruisers that don't want to get off the boat for a port.
Go see the comics. They have 2 comedy shows a night and switch the comedians in the middle of the cruise. You will never see the same show twice.

Be Friendly
Most experienced cruisers are extremely friendly and want to tell you all about the best parts of cruising and they want to make sure you have a good experience on your first cruise. You will find that when you have dinner you will either dine around or dine with the same groups of people. We thought it was funny because we had dinner for 3 of the 6 nights with the same group of people even though we were eating at different times each night. You will make a lot of different friends on the ship, so try to think of a way to remember names because they WILL remember yours.

We had a blast on our cruise and we can't wait to do it again!