New York #1

For our eighth anniversary Bob and I decided to go on a trip.  This was our first big trip alone since our honeymoon and we decided to go to New York.  It was Amazing!

That first picture is probably my favorite out of all 800+ we took.

But for our trip we needed to do it as cheap as possible, which meant visiting all the free tourist stops and taking the bus from Cincinnati.  Neither Bob nor I had ever done a long bus ride before but we were optimistic.  It only cost $240 for both of us round trip and we wouldn't have been able to do it if we had to buy plane tickets.  We did have one little (ok big) hiccup though.  Our bus left Cincinnati Sunday night at 8:30 and was supposed to get to New York at 9:00am Monday morning.  We were planing on sleeping on the bus but in the middle of the night the bus driver pulled over.  He didn't really speak English so we had no idea what was going on.  After a few hours on the side of the road in Pittsburg we got in a van a couple at a time and sat at a gas station for a few more hours.  Long story short the bus broke down and we waited for 7 hours for the next one the whole time not knowing what was going on.  It was pretty miserable, but it could have been worse.  We could have had our kids with us.  Here is a picture of Bob waiting with our stuff at the gas station, this was taken before the owner came out and made us move around back near the stinky dumpsters.

We ended up arriving Monday afternoon and we were pretty beat.  Our plans for the day were ruined so we found something to eat and just headed back to our place.  I'm so glad I planed an extra day in our trip to do whatever we wanted.  We ended up using it on the first day, but we didn't end up missing out on anything we really wanted to see, I just had to rearrange our schedule.

Hotels in NYC are crazy expensive so we tried out Airbnb.  For those who don't know it is a website online where anyone can rent out anything from their couch to their spare apartment.  We ended up with a basement apartment off someones house in NY.  It was perfect for us.  The only downside was it was about 45 minutes away from the city.  I was worried that it wouldn't be safe but it was in the Ironbound area which I guess was ok.  I felt pretty safe but just wasn't used to being a minority and there being lots of people out on the street at midnight.

Here's Bob infront of our place with his backpack.  We each just packed one backpack for the week.

For the next two days we did hop on hop off bus tours.  This was the best investment we made!  For only $50 we saw pretty much everything.  We saw so many cool things we would never have been able to look up or even think of to go see ourselves. (Bob was chewing gum in the picture but it was the only one of us on the bus so I'm sharing anyway.)

One of our first stops was at the 9/11 memorial.  They built these two amazing square fountains in place of the towers.  Around the edges was engraved the names of all the people who died.  It was beautiful but sad at the same time.

The next is a picture of the survivor tree at ground zero.  Although severely damaged it made it through the attacks and is now growing strong.

A rose is placed on each victims name on their birthday.

Also while on the bus tours we saw so many places where they film movies and tv shows.  Here is a picture of me on the courthouse steps where they film NCIS.

This next one is a picture of where they filmed the Bill Cosby show.  There were seriously so many, I can't even remember them all.

I though this next building was cool.  It has the swerve design so each apartment can have sunlight.  But the coolest part is that it has it's own elementary school for the kids who live in it.  Imagine, taking your child to school would be only an elevator ride away.

Later that day we saw a bus accident with one of the exact hop on hop off tour buses we were on. Traffic was insane there, it's no wonder everyone rides the subway.

I have so much to share about our trip, this will just have to do for now :)