Stop spreading the news, we left (New York) today :-(

So I know a few people are wanting an update on our trip so far but in all honesty this is the first opportunity we've had to have any form of chill time and put 'finger to ipad'! I'm sitting in our beautiful bohemian boutique guest house in Santa Teresa, Rio De Janeiro but let's recap on the wonder that is New York City.  We've had some issues uploading pictures so check back in a day or two and hopefully you'll see some graphical representation of our time in the Big Apple.

This is a long one as we did a lot, they won't all be like this:

Monday 3rd November

We find out that our hotel includes breakfast (a surprise but appreciated bit of news as eating ain't cheap in NYC). The breakfast was true NYC style with cooked breakfast inc crispy bacon, waffles, French toast and of course Maple Syrup. Not overly my thing but Gareth was in breakfast heaven. We had a great view of Times Square whilst tucking in. 

We concocted a plan for the day and bought a ticket from the concierge that included open top tour buses of all over Manhatten and Brooklyn as well as 5 attractions each and decided to make our first attraction 'Top of The Rock' at the Rockefeller Centre. We booked our slot and then walked along 5th Ave doing a bit of window shopping as our rucksacks won't allow for anything else. 

We popped into a cool little cafe/ bar called Resette and had a truly American calorie filled frappacino of sorts. Delicious and definitely somewhere we'd like to go back to in the evening.

We had lots of advice from people before we went about whether 'Top of The Rock' or Empire State Building was better and most people said 'Top of The Rock' as whilst the Empire State Building is so iconic for many reasons, you get the best view from TOTR including the Empire State, I have to say I agree. Now I don't know whether it was due to the fact the weather was beautiful that day but the view was breathtaking. Neither of us realised how big Central Park was either, it takes up such a massive proportion of Manhattan. 

After a true NYC style lunch (10cm high salt beef sandwich), we then jumped on an open top bus and took a tour of Downtown Manhattan, including Times Square, Empire State Building, Madison Square Gardens, Fashion Avenue, Grenwich and Wall Street. Our guide was (accidentally) hilarious, rather than pointing out some of the statues we passed and their significance, he was more interested in getting us to look in the windows of offices to see real people working and point out all of the construction workers on the buildings; "look up now, you will see workers mending the building"...."now, look to your right, more workers". So pleased we have identified the various building maintainers in MH. That said, it was a fantastic way to see NYC, especially as our lack of fitness resulted in us being cream crackered by mid afternoon.

As today was the opening of the World a Trade Centre, it only seemed only right to visit it as well as ground zero. The memorial was incredibly moving, especially where they left roses for each individual on their birthday.

After a long but amazing  day and following a very late night the night before due to flying in, we were very tempted to call it a night but our friends had recommended a good restaurant and we were already booked in, so we found a minuscule amount of energy and headed back out again. We started by having a couple of Mojitos and funnily enough our energy was back and resulted in our best date night in ages. We talked, philosophised, laughed lots and played silly games (can you believe that of Gareth?). We went back to our hotel bar for a night cap and Gareth proceeded to involve the fairly stand-off-ish waiters in the game! 

Tuesday 4th November

Wow, what a beautiful day!!! 22 degrees Celsius and wall to wall sunshine! So we thought we better make good use of it and do another open top bus tour, this time of uptown Manhattan, including Central Park, the place where John Lennon was shot, a ridiculous amount of celebrities houses as well as Harlem. I shocked my father by telling him that we went to the Art Museum, this was not a lie, we even shocked ourselves to be in there it then realised we didn't have long so after getting through security we came straight out again. We then took a stroll through Central Park. Although, disappointingly to find out, it's mostly man made, it really is very beautiful, compounded by the perfect weather it was a quiet oasis in the midst of a bustling city. One of my dreams was to ice skate in Central Park and that dream came true....

Well, this picture doesn't tell you the fully story. Gareth and I paid our $50, donned our skates, wobbled to the edge of the rink, placed both skates on the rink and realised within seconds this was not a wise move. We both were ridiculously unsteady on our feet and it dawned on us that falling and breaking a bone would be the end of our trip. Feeling slight deflated but more gutted about the wasted $50, we proceeded to take silly pics pretending we were skating (see above).

Did I mention it was 22 degrees. Photo of strappy top to prove it, crazy weather for November but much appreciated :-)

Straight from Central Park we took a Hudson river cruise to see the sights from the water.  The main sight we wanted to see was the Statue of Liberty, however, we needed to get off at one of the drop off points at Wall Street and annoyingly they had chosen to sail by the statue on the back end of the loop, after we'd got off! Still, we got to see her from a distance and people said she's not that chatty anyway.

Wall Street & the financial district was very, very strange. It was a beautiful day but this whole area was dark and eerily quiet, almost oppressive. The buildings were so tall and so close together. This explained the darkness but the buzz of NYC just didn't seem to be there.

After an early dinner in an Irish pub (!) we headed to Broadway to briefly meet with one of Gareth's clients in their really funky offices. Gareth was introduced as Dan Magness' agent & I got introduced to 15 people individually as "Laura".

On a friend's recommendation we then headed off to Brooklyn Tabernacle to experience church Brooklyn style! There were about 2000 people there for their Tuesday night service. It was a Pentecostal church experience not to forget! It was straight to sleep after that as we headed into our final day in the Big Apple.

Wednesday 5th November

After breakfast we walked down Broadway to Macy's to have a quick look around and then, although the weather wasn't as nice as the day before, we headed to the Empire State Building. Walking inside this iconic building, we recounted all the films that had been filmed and referenced there including my favourite, "an affair to remember".  It was fairly quiet as the weather wasn't the best so we were in and out in about 30 mins.

After checking out and lunch at Planet Hollywood, we had one more thing to before heading to the airport, go to a matinee show on Broadway. Now I wouldn't say that G or I were big musical fans, in fact I'd go as far to say that G does not like musicals. However, he was persuaded by friends to try one of the biggies. This was fantastic news for me as getting him to a musical full stop was going to be a challenge. This is what we chose:

 All I/ we can say about that is 'WOW'! Not only is the story really moving but the acting and singing was incredible. We both got goosebumps throughout and I found myself close to sobbing, so much so the lady next to me even handed me a tissue. We left feeling exhilarated, an afternoon never to be forgotten.

So on to the airport, the less said about that journey the better but thankfully we got there in one piece. As we got dropped off, I realised that I would usually feel a bit sad at this stage but I realised that we were now on to the next step of our adventure, Rio de Janeiro.....