NYC Trip (the intro)

Ever since I was a little girl, I dreamt of visiting New York City! I've always loved big cities, particularly city lights at night and tall sky scrapers. I think this dream was inspired by the many movies I watched as a kid that took place in NYC, or any big city for that matter. I could hardly wait to experience the excitement for myself--lights, broadway, food, crazy traffic, scary people, the whole lot! This May, my dream finally came true! My husband and I, along with my sister-in-law, Heather and her Husband Tanner, spent a week in the big apple!

One of the most exciting elements of our trip was our accommodations. Rather than paying for expensive hotels, we opted to find abodes through airbnb.com. This website allows people who have extra space to rent it out (whether it's one room in their house, an extra apartment, cabin, house boat, tree house, teepee, converted hippy bus etc. (really, those are all on there!) Last year we used this site to find a hostel in Thailand, where we each had our own single beds in a room where there were three additional beds with strangers sleeping in them. It was a great adventure!

This picture (forgive the blurriness) was taken at about 1AM when we arrived at our hostel in Bangkok, Thailand last year. We were shown to our shared room where a snoring stranger lay sleeping on one of the five beds. If you'll notice--there's a beer bottle sitting on his locker (sketchy)! . . .Actually he turned out to be really nice :)

This year, we used airbnb to find 4 different accommodations while we were in NYC. The first was in Chelsea, NY the second in Union City, NJ, the third in New Haven, CT, and the fourth was across the street from the South end of central park (no kidding)! So we stayed in 3 different states on our trip!

Finding sleeping accommodations this way was a fantastic idea for at least a few reasons--first, it allowed us to see how the locals lived, and even meet some of them. Secondly, it meant we had access to a full kitchen everywhere we stayed; and third, it was WAAAY cheaper than a hotel. To give you an idea, our best deal was at the apartment across the street from Central Park. The four of us had a one bedroom apartment plus a sofa bed in the front room for less than $200 night. The JW Marriott just a few doors down offers a similar sized space (1 bedroom plus a sofa bed in the front room) MINUS the kitchen for $899/night! Oh how I love good deals!

Above: This map shows a general idea of where we stayed in NY/NJ.

Below: On one of the days we rented a car and drove to New Haven, CT ( Robby's birthplace). We also stopped by Greenwich, CT (Heather's birthplace) on our way up there (more about that later).

 We got to do/see/eat so much that I think it would be best to break it down into separate blog posts for each day. . .although I admit that's a little optimistic of me--hopefully I'll make time to sit down and write that many blog posts before burning out. But the take-home message is that it was a fantastic trip! It was wonderful to spend so much time with the love of my life and to travel with Heather and Tanner who we don't see often enough!