I’m finally here! After a fairly long trip – 15 hours to LA, 4 hours stopover, then 5 more to NY – I was so excited to just get to my hotel and have a shower and fall into bed. I’m staying in a really cute little place, it’s quite far uptown but was so much nicer than similar things further into the city at the same price, so I don’t mind the trade off in regards to distance.

My super cute little room – complete with home baked cookies and the world’s comfiest bed

For my first day, I decided to just have a wander around and get my bearings a bit. I ended up walking nearly 20km throughout the day! Made my first stop at Lululemon to stock up on winter clothes – they have an awesome range compared to what we’ve got back home. Then I wandered through Central Park a bit, and went through the Zoo. It wasn’t bad, much smaller than our zoos back home, but it was interesting to see a few different types of animals.

Central Park

Then I’d made it right down into the city – and it really is just like the movies. Everything is so pretty, the Christmas decorations are incredible. You could walk around for hours and not get bored, there’s so much to see even just in the window displays.

Beautiful Christmas decorations inside Tiffany & Co

Street view of Tiffany & Co

Eventually got to Times Square.. Yikes! It really is so touristy and overwhelming. Certainly worth checking out, but wouldn’t worry about going back for a second look. My next stop was the Rockefeller Centre for the Top of the Rock observation deck tour. i made it up just before sunset, so it was amazing to see the city come alive in the dark. It really is such a massive, beautiful city.

Skyline view from the Rockefeller Center

Then I was off to a cute little bar for dinner, whilst waiting to go and see Chicago on Broadway.  Had a few wines and got pretty tipsy… Is American wine stronger or something??  Eventually made it to Chicago, which was incredible. I’ve seen the movie a million times and know all the words to the songs, but seeing it live is an entirely different experience. i still haven’t really figured out the whole subway thing, so I decided to begin walking home and just catch a taxi when I got too tired. I ended up just walking the entire way home – amazingly enough it does feel really safe here, even after midnight. It helps that there are people and cops everywhere all the time. i was paying for all my walking a bit by the time I got home though.. very sore and crampy, found it really hard to fall asleep. I think I might have a more relaxed day tomorrow and just check out museum mile, and try to plan for more exciting stuff on Wednesday and Thursday before I head down to Pennsylvania.