Tripping

We try to plan one to two trips a year to get out of Florida and I love planning things extremely far in advance.  Since next year we aren't taking a cruise we decided to do a land trip somewhere and after tossing around some ideas we settled on going back to New York City.  

We first went to NYC in 2003 and the trip had a very rough start, enough to make us consider packing our bags and leaving the day after we got there.  We made some crucial mistakes while trying to save money and learned from those mistakes.  

Things we learned: staying in one of the outer boroughs can cost you lots of time and money getting in and out of the city, it's important to know whether you are heading uptown or downtown before going through a subway turnstile, there is a big difference between the local and the express train, ten blocks may not look like much on a map but walking it is a different story, and ambulances are fearless in the city.

Once we figured out how to travel around (we exclusively took the subway and walked everywhere) we were good to go.   I wasn't of legal drinking age last time we were there so I'm hoping we can have fun in a few nightspots this time around and I don't have to worry about getting carded this time.  We are also booking a spot in Manhattan to save on commute time and money since last time we stayed in Jamaica, Queens and that got expensive taking the Long Island Railroad in each day as the A train took forever otherwise.  

There are lots of things we weren't able to get to last time we were there so I wanna list things we're hoping to do this next time:

• Ellis Island/Statue of Liberty tour (it was partially closed in 2003)
• Go inside the Chrysler Building
• Hit up The City Quilter
• Visit some textile shops and that amazing notion shop I keep hearing about
• Eat: Peanut Butter & Jelly Co, Magnolia Bakery, A Salt and Battery, Shopsins, Club A Steakhouse and whatever else we fall into.  
• Drink!
• I'd like to do the NYC Food Tour of a few different areas and a Chocolate Tour
• Revisit Central Park, Macys, Grand Central, the Library, Trade Center Memorial, Times Square
• Try to do a few TV shows if we can get tickets (hopefully can do Daily Show again and maybe get into Colbert)
• Do another Circle Line cruise
• Self-guided bar crawl tour thingie
• Visit some of the big stores like Apple, Toys R Us etc.
• Play some pinball at Reciprocal Skateboards

I'm sure I'll be adding to the list as we get closer to February. So excited!