I <3 New York - Day 1

What an adventurous first day!

After finally arriving in New York, Peter and I met up with Isaac and Claudia to have lunch at Shake Shack before heading to our apartment.

In-N-Out > Shake Shack

We had booked a room on AirBnB in Hell’s Kitchen, right next to Times Square. The owner (who would be staying on the bed in the living room) was out of town so we pretty much had the whole apartment to ourselves. Our only other roommate was her adorable cat, Marusya. The man who was going to prepare the room for us told us the room was ready so we headed to the apartment.

I’ve never owned a cat before and, as a dog owner, I know that when I open the front door, I have to be exceptionally careful that pets don’t come running out. I slowly opened the door.. only to find that Marusya was no where to be found. We started looking for her until I noticed that the window in the living room was wide open.. to a 40 foot drop. In a panic, I called the guy who had prepped the room thinking maybe Marusya had jumped out. However, the guy told me to look under the armchair in the living room and, of course, there was Marusya’s little yellow eyes staring right back at me.

After a little bit of refreshing, we all set out to explore lower Manhattan on a double-decker bus. We hung out with the Wall Street Bull and rubbed him all over for good luck. We checked out the World Trade Center Memorial and headed for the World Trade Center transportation hub to go to New Jersey for dinner and to take skyline photos of New York.

While the boys took photos, Claudia and I made friends with the fishermen and patiently (or maybe not-so-patiently) waited for the guys to be done.

Before heading back to our apartment, we wandered around the World Trade Center transportation hub and Oculus. It was pretty late so the Oculus was empty. It felt like we were standing in the middle of a giant whale; its skeleton surrounding us.

Exhausted, we made our way back to the apartment to rest up for our first full day in New York.