NYC Day 5

This is the last series of entries and pictures concerning my trip to New York. Let's make it a good one! 


Wednesday, the 18th 


So this was our last day in the city (wah) and the only morning where we had an actual breakfast in the hotel restaurant. It was really quite good for a hotel breakfast too! I had the Belgian waffles with berries and homemade whipped cream. Let me type that again. HOMEMADE. WHIPPED. CREAM. That's right. 


We finished and went back up to our room to get ready to head into Hoboken, NJ for the day and my dad and I thought it would be a good idea to get pictures from our hotel room window since our views were incredible! 

This is the view from our window. The brick building you see at the bottom of the picture is  a new luxury apartment complex that looked super swanky and super expensive. There were two swimming pools. Two! And did I mention the two tennis courts? 

Here's a better picture of Lower Manhattan and the river. Really pretty in the sunlight, right? If you look at the city, the very tall building with the antennae is the Freedom Tower.  








So we drove into Hoboken, the home of Carlo's Bakery, home of Cake Boss. Yes, that is correct. And no, I did not go in. Our server at breakfast told us not to, that the stuff was just okay. So, if you really feel the need to go into Carlo's Bakery to buy a cannoli and get a picture of the pastry case, be my guest. But remember what I said.  
ANYWAY, we walked around Hoboken and I was not very impressed. It was either realty businesses or food establishments. I thought the town would have had a bit more life to it! But, whatever. I was there for two hours. 

Here's the downtown. What do you think? It reminded me of certain parts of Brooklyn I had been in a few days before. 

Here it is, the infamous Carlo's Bake Shop. Amazingly enough, there was no line! 

A nice residential street in Hoboken. That is my family on the sidewalk in the far left corner. 

This is the Stevenson Institute of Technology in Hoboken. I saw a ton of freshman going through orientation and getting a tour of the college! 






Near the Stevenson Institute of Technology, there was a boardwalk and on the boardwalk you could get beautiful views across the water to Manhattan. It was a hot, clear day so I got some pretty good pictures! 

This is the very front of the boardwalk, so I was able to get a pretty wide scope of the city. Doesn't it look great? 

This is the opposite side of the city from what you have been seeing in the past couple of pictures. Down there, it goes more into New Jersey and Staten Island. 

The Freedom Tower! The water looked so pretty. I would have loved to have gone out on a boat that day. 

I thought if I tried really hard I could get a semi-decent picture of myself with the views of Manhattan in the background making up for it. But, no. So this is my one and only attempt. 










After visiting Hoboken, we decided to go into our old town to visit ( Shout out to New Providence!) and check out our old house. It was good to go back. I have a lot of good memories and friends there that I miss. In fact, my mom and I went into the local pharmacy where I remember going in a million times when we lived there and I thought we would be recognized by someone! But no. And I was okay with that. 

This is my old house! I remember playing in the front yard a lot and sledding down the driveway in the winter because we lived on a hill. And by the way, that ugly siding on the top of the front of the house wasn't there when we lived there. 

My old school, Salt Brook Elementary! Did you know that there is brook across from the school and during the Civil War they put salt in the brook and that was how it got its name? No, you probably didn't. 

The main drag in New Providence. I saw a car parked on the side of street that looked like ours and I said, "What is our car doing there?!" And everyone in the car thought I'd lost it. 




We left New Providence and drove back into Jersey City to get ready to go back into the city. And it started to get VERY dark. It was thunder storming by the time we left the hotel and were walking to the subway station. And in typical fashion, we got stuck in the actual subway because there was a holdup with the rain. So we got into Rockefeller Center late and met our friends late and we couldn't decide where to eat so we ended up at this seafood bar called Oceana where I drank two Pepsis and had, like, two pieces of gnocchi. I also tried fried calamari for the first time, and let me tell you something, I have been missing out for the past fifteen years. That stuff is amazing. 


After that, it was getting dark and the rain had stopped so we said goodbye to our friends and walked down to the Magnolia Bakery in Rockefeller Center and got cupcakes for dessert (!) and decided to go into Times Square so we could finally see it at night. It was amazing! I wanted to look at so much all at the same time, but the lights and the signs and the sirens kept distracting me. There was so much to look at all at once. 

The very famous Coca-Cola sign in Times Square! I was looking for it in front of me and I couldn't see it, so for some reason I turned around and there it was! 

Another very tall sign that was on the opposite side of Times Square from the Coco-Cola sign. 

So many theaters! They were actually all on side streets, The Lion King theater was the only one on the actual main drag. It was really cool to come to Times Square and see where I was going to work one day! 

This picture was taken for the purpose of the sign for the London Olympics sign being there and I didn't even notice the NYPD was right in front of it! But there it is. Go boys in blue!  

I was so incredibly excited to see this. I looked up and saw the Empire State building all lit up, a sight I thought I wasn't going to get a chance to see and gasped and just got a random shot of it.  








Ok, not gonna lie, I started to cry on the subway ride home. I was just so overwhelmed and ecstatic to be there, in the biggest city in the world! I had covered so much ground in under a week and to think I was leaving the next day, I was absolutely gutted. I honestly felt like I was leaving home for a while. But one day I'll be back. I know I will. And I can't wait.