Hello! It is me again bringing more content to my little place on the web. You all know I have a love for travel and I love sharing how we are able to make traveling fit in our budget.  We went on two ‘big trips’ this year and I will share how we made that happen.  We went to Hawaii in May (which I still need to get a post together) and then we went to NYC in November. I am not a pro traveler, but I like to share what worked for us and maybe the same options can help you while visiting NYC.

When we booked the NYC trip, we had just returned from Hawaii and did not know we were expecting our first child yet.  Fast forward from the end of May to November and this momma turned our fall NYC trip into a baby moon/celebrate my Husbands 35th birthday.  I was 23 weeks pregnant at the time of our trip. We did a lot of the standard tourist things everyone should experience when visiting NYC.  Plus ate lots of good food.  I have been many times to the big apple, my husband had only been for business with not much time to explore.

When we booked this trip, it was partial because it had been on our list of places to go, but we just hadn’t made it out to New York. I thought it would be a great trip for the Fall and Southwest Airlines was having a big sale on airfare which I had points! I was able to get both my husband and I’s airfare ‘free’ roundtrip.  I had enough Southwest points to cover both our roundtrip tickets. I use my Southwest credit card to make a lot of large purchases then turn around to pay it and in return I get a lot of points toward free flights.  Those free flights or legs of flights help with the travel cost that go into a trip.  Another way we save on our travel budget is hotel points.  My husband’s previous job in sales required a lot of overnight travel and he was able to rack up a lot of Hilton points when traveling for business.  We then use those points for free night stays while we travel. Score!  (we did this for half our Hawaii stay as well, more on that in another post) For our NYC trip, our cost consisted of food, transportation in the city and activities while visiting. Keep reading to see other ways we  saved during our trip.

My map of places to go:

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The many times I have been to NYC, I hadn’t walked the Brooklyn Bridge. So when we planned our trip, it was one of the things to check off the list. We walked the Brooklyn bridge and then came back on the Manhattan Bridge.  After walking the bridges, we checked out Chinatown and hubs got his favorite, Pho.

Central Park

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Another stop we made was Central Park.  The park is beautiful during the Fall. It is huge but we ended up walking quite a few miles all over the park.  We visited the second week of November so it was chilly but not extremely cold yet.

Times Square

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We made our way through Time Square both during the day and once at night.  My husband had not seen Time Square in person and his first thought “it looks so much bigger on TV”.  I had been many many times before so it was just how I remembered. The entire trip, we took the subway and walked ALOT.  We never took one Uber or Taxi. Riding the Subway can save you a lot on transportation costs. We each bought a card and loaded money as needed. It is a bit intimidating if you are from a city like us that does not have a subway system, but it is well worth the savings on your legs and wallet.

Grand Central Station & Bryant Park

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Grand Central is just interesting to see all the people on their own schedule trying to get to the many destinations.  The building itself is also gorgeous. It was a first destination for us both.  We also made our way to Bryant Park.  It had really cool pop up shops with handmade items in the park for the holidays along with the ice skating rink.  Ice skating in NYC is on my bucket list but I had to pass this time around since I was pregnant during our visit.

High Line // MOMA NYC  //  9/11 Museum-Memorial //  Chelsea Market

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Above are a few pictures from some stops we made around the city.  On our way back to the hotel from Central Park, we stopped to see St. Patrick’s Cathedral.  The architecture is gorgeous to say the least.  I also scheduled our time at the MoMa museum on Friday evening on purpose because they have free admission from 6-8pm. Just an fyi if you are visiting and have the museum on your list of must see.

We also headed over to the Chelsea Market which I did not photograph, but I did get this photograph of our walk to the market.  is that brownstone ready for me to move in? 🙂 After the market we headed to the High Line since it is very close.  This was a neat park/ walking path to check out, beautiful views of the city. We did wait until our last day to head over and see the 9/11 museum/memorial.  If you have not been, I strongly recommend you have this on your list when visiting. The feelings and emotions while visiting brought back my memory as a 14 year old teenager trying to understand such a tragedy.

Sure, this is ‘most’ of what we did, however, there are many things in between that photos did not capture.  All those NY pizza slices. 🙂 It was a fun trip for my husband and I, we really enjoyed exploring NYC together.  We did fly in and out of Newark NJ meaning we had to get from the airport to Manhattan. I did research before we left to see what would be the cheapest and least amount sitting in traffic. Once getting off the plane, we headed to the Air Tran at the airport, then got off to catch the NJ Transit train to the city.  We paid for our tickets before we got onto the Air Tran which you need for the NJ Transit train all the way into Manhattan.  We paid $11.55 per adult to get us from Newark to Penn Station.  That  means for my husband and I it was $23.10 one way.  I looked into Uber, Taxi’s and the bus system.  The cons to those options, you sit in the traffic and/or pay at least double the price.  Taking the train was simple and fun, plus who doesn’t like it also being cheaper. Once it was time to leave the city and head to the airport, we did the same thing in reverse. 🙂

NYC you were so much fun.  I did take some video as well, I am not sure if I will make a post with that footage yet.  You could spend a week plus exploring the city.  Our trip was 5 days total including flights.  Definitely bring comfortable shoes if you plan to knock a lot off of your bucket list. If you are planning your first trip or fiftieth trip, I hope you have fun.

Until next time NYC……….

Jessica

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