New York Trip Day 1: Times Square and Statue of Liberty

Grand Central Station was the first place we went to after we arrived in New York. We took a shuttle bus to the station from the air port and then we took a taxi to our hotel from there. The most beautiful subway station I've ever seen. I wish we could have stayed at the station longer though, we were only there briefly for 5 minutes because we had to get to our hotel and drop off all our luggage.  

The flatiron building in Manhattan. After we dropped off our luggage at the hotel, we decided to roam around the city and shop for a bit before we catch our boat cruise around Manhattan and see the statue of the liberty. This building reminds me of the one we have in Toronto at Front Street. 

Boat cruise tour around Manhattan and the statue of Liberty! The boat cruise was 3 hours long and I almost felt so sick after that I just really wanted to go back on land! After our boat cruise we wanted to explore the city more and roam around Times Square but we didn't know how to get there. Luckily we met two kind fellows on the boat cruise who are from Australia and they were also heading to Times Square and my friends and I tagged along and followed them, lol.  

Roaming around in Times Square where we passed by the Sanrio store and people dressed up as cartoon characters. Spotted Hello Kitty and 3 minions from Despicable Me. Soooo cute! 

And that concludes my first day in New York. Boat cruise around Manhattan and roaming at Times Square. We headed back to our hotel after and took a shower and went out for dinner in the evening to Shake Shack where we had the best burgers ever! I forgot to take pics of our food because we had dinner pretty late and I was super hungry!! Shake Shack was actually a pretty popular place and we waited in line for about 30 minutes to order our food. Overall it was a great day filled with lots of sight seeing. =)

New York Trip: Holiday Inn Express Hotel

It feels like it's been sooooo long since I last blogged...2.5 weeks?! That's probably the longest time that I have not blogged for since I started this blog. I sincerely apologize for the lack of blogging and updates. I've been busy since my work contract ended trying to find a new job. I applied to like 20+ jobs in the past 2 weeks and so far no luck in getting any replies back yet. Then I left for my New York trip from August 15-18th and I actually just got back home yesterday morning at 8:30am. So I was super tired as I didn't sleep the entire night before since I had to leave my hotel to go to the airport at 2am in the morning and got there around 3:30am and waited half an hour to get checked in and go through security and it was just brutal! The first thing I did after I got home was eat some food and SLEEP FOR THE ENTIRE DAY!!! Sleeping on my own bed has never felt so good before. 

Anyway, for my first New York trip post I just wanted to talk about the hotel I stayed at which was a pretty awesome hotel by the way. Great location in downtown of Manhattan at Madison Square Garden where I stayed at the Holiday Inn Express Hotel located on 232 W 29th Street. It was really close to Times Square...just about 2 subway stations away!

And since I failed to take any pictures of the actual hotel while I was there, I had to search for these pictures from google. But I can assure the hotel looked exactly like what it was in these pictures. I really hate it when hotels post really unrealistic fancy photos of the to make it look somewhat attractive and it's like the complete opposite when you go there. But these pictures are actually what the hotel look like when you see in person. 

A day and night view of the front of the hotel. I like how there's a patio where you can sit outside. 

Our hotel room and the bath room. We got a 2 queen size bed room with 3 people and we each took turns to sleep on a bed entirely alone for the 3 nights that we stayed there.

The cafeteria where we had our breakfast buffet. It was included in our hotel fee so breakfast was free. One of the best hotel breakfast I ever had where they actually served you real breakfast food! Everything from pancakes, muffins, bagels, bread, omelettes, bacon, hot dogs, yogurt, fruits. There was actually quite a wide selection of food to eat. Also coffee and tea was served all day! We actually stole some snack food like yogurt, bananas, apples and muffins to take out with us in case we get hungry throughout day and we wanted something to munch on, lol. Hey it's free so why not make use of it, right? XD 

There was also a free gym facility and computers with printers. We didn't use much of these facilities because we almost never got back to the hotel every night until past 11pm, lol. 

Overall it was a pretty good experience at the hotel and I'd definitely go back to stay there again. I'd rate this hotel a 4 star! A really clean and nice hotel at a great location too right in the downtown area. I'd also highly recommend it to anyone who plans to visit New York City. =)