survived.nyc.2012.day.one.

Posted: May 21, 2012 | Author: joybrewed | Filed under: Food., Places. | Tags: brooklyn, condor hotel, empire state building, flushing, grand central station, Howard Beach Station, jfk, new york knicks, nyc, NYC Subway, queens, times square, travel | 3 Comments »

As all of you may know, I am a promise-breaker. I know I said I was going to post our recent New York photos the week after our trip. That didn’t really happen did it? Today is the first day of our third week since we came back from the trip and I’m just starting to get back into the groove of things at home. Who would’ve thought that a five-day trip to the east and then getting a new job the very next day after coming back from the trip, would get me so out-of-sync?

Enough of the excuses. I’m here to satiate your hunger for exciting things

Most of you know that we got to go to NYC because of a wonderful ticket sale we found online. We flew from YVR-JFK (Vancouver to New York), which is a very rare thing, when you’re looking at cheap plane tickets. For us Canadians, we would normally have to drive down to Bellingham or Seattle to get on a plane to the east, just so it wouldn’t cost us an arm and a leg. So when we saw that the cheap tickets were from Vancouver to New York, we immediately decided it was for us (by immediately, I mean 3 days of thinking and praying about it).

Here’s a few photos from our first day:

We went to take the JFK AirTrain after arriving at JFK airport at around 7pm EST. Unlike most tourists, we didn’t take a cab to get to our hotel from the airport. We hopped off of the AirTrain at the Howard Beach Station to catch our first subway train to get to Manhattan. The wait took longer than anticipated, hence we got to take a few more shots before we got on the subway train.

Our temporary home in NYC was this quaint hotel in Brooklyn. It’s a 20-minute train ride to Manhattan. We enjoyed our stay at this hotel. It was a very clean and comfortable place to be in, after walking about 12-14 hours a day in Manhattan.

After checking-in and freshening up a bit, out we went, off to Manhattan. First stop, Grand Central.

Aji and I weren’t really hungry after enduring 4 airports, 3 airplanes, and a few subway trains. After all, we were offered: peanuts, cookies or pretzels, three times, on three different aircrafts! So yes, we had to have real food (and by real I mean, a good burger, french fries and a milk shake) and our fast food of choice was Shake Shack!

Then we took the cross town “S train” to get to Times Square station, and then another train downtown to Penn Station, and a few blocks of walking to get to the Empire State building.

Aji’s mission, being an architect and all, was to see the Chrysler building in all of its glory from the observatory deck of the Empire State building. Mission accomplished.