Our Honeymoon Part 2: 1 Day in NYC
You can read the first part of our honeymoon here!
Growing up I always loved traveling and when I met Zach he really had no interest in traveling.
It was so fun to be there alongside him as he experienced new places and grew a love for travel!
I will never forget how he was anti-visiting New York and was like “why would I want to go there” haha
When we had a long layover in NYC for our honeymoon I felt like it was a GOLDEN opportunity to show him the city since I knew he’d be unlikely to want to travel there otherwise.
In planning out our flights to Maldives and back home I talked with Delta a ton and they informed me that, at that time anyway, as long as a layover was less then 24 or 36 hours long it would still be considered a layover and not count as a separate flight.
I can’t remember the exact details but it was a short timespan but enough to give us a full day in the city!
SCORE.
We set up our schedule to fly into New York City from Dubai with ONE DAY between the flight from NYC back to Florida.
This gave us roughly 24 hours to LIVE IT UP in New York!
I wish I knew exact times of everything but we arrived at JFK early morning and got through customs and everything and hailed our first taxi to head to our hotel!
I just cannot FATHOM how exhausted we had to be and how messed up our systems were from the time changes.
And this was before I even ever had tried coffee.
HOW did we DO ALL THIS? Oh to be young again right?!?!
Ironically in current time while writing this (April 17 2020) we SHOULD be in New York City but instead I’m home blogging about our first visit to the big apple together thanks to the world crisis of coronavirus.
Someday we’ll go back 🙂
We got checked into the hotel and got cleaned up to visit Top of the Rock as our first stop!
We stayed at The Pod Hotel and it was a wonderful experience (I actually ended up staying at the Pod again on our NYC Girl’s Trip!)
Zach’s parents surprised us with pastries delivered to our room when we arrived which was so thoughtful!
We were SO grateful to our families for hosting our incredible wedding and allowing us to have this amazing honeymoon…hope Zach remembers how generous our parents all were when it comes time for our kids to get married 😉 We better start saving (coughDISNEYWEDDINGcough).
We went to the Top of the Rock and had our first NYC pizza for dinner (it did NOT disappoint)
My straightener blew up in the outlet during the Maldives portion of the trip so I had to wear my hair natural in New York, I remember being so frustrated about that but looking back it’s cute!
We got some sleep then HIT THE TOWN.
We got up early and rode the subway for the first time (fun fact: Zach still LOVES navigating the subway, even with Uber he will choose the subway every time).
We rode the subway down to the World Trade Center location.
At that time Freedom Tower had not yet been built and there was a memorial type thing set up right as you got off the subway.
Even just being at Ground Zero was so moving and it was touching how there were NO street vendors set up and it was very clean and well-kept and quiet.
I was looking forward to taking Zach to the 911 Memorial Museum, I was glad to have visited during our Girl’s Trip and it is SO well done and I know he’d appreciate it as well.
Our first food stop was for a BAGEL!
We went to a random deli and got a true New York Bagel (not as good as Bagel World, of course) and then did a little self-guided site seeing and even a bit of shopping.
We were doing our NYC day as cheaply as we could and I’d done lots of research and learned you can ride the Staten Island Ferry to see the Statue of Liberty for free!
It was truly perfect.
On a later trip to NYC we did tour the statue and I recommend the Staten Island ferry route instead. Ellis Island is cool but the statue itself isn’t really worth all the time.
We went to Pier 17 and it was Zach’s turn for a bit of shopping at Express Men (he still has the shirt he bought there actually).
We were able to see the Brooklyn Bridge which made for some great pics and then we headed to Chinatown which ended up being our favorite memory of this leg of our honeymoon.
Yall know I love a deal and Canal Street was AMAZING.
We got to go back in the “secret rooms” and it all was so sneaky and exciting and we were proud of our black bag deals 😉 Pretty sure it was knock-off Coach bags but we were pumped.
We had reservations for lunch (it was 3:00ish by that point) at Carmines!
We left Carmine’s and did exploring around Times Square, 5th Avenue and did a bit of shopping at H&M
I hadn’t been to New York since middle school (my cousins family took me over Thanksgiving for the Macy’s Day Parade…it was amazing) so a LOT of this trip was a first for me too and I loved getting to explore the city together.
Zach was hesitant about a New York visit at first but now it’s a place we both truly LOVE and we can’t wait to go back!
I love how OVER the whole “face picture” thing Zach was doing haha
Fun to see Times Square how it was in 2007 as SO MUCH has changed! So sad that Toys R Us is no longer a thing.
We went to Central Park and decided to take a romantic carriage ride through the park together.
I mean it’s your honeymoon…it’s a must-do right? 😉
We went back to the room to get ready and headed over to broadway for Zach’s first broadway play – Wicked!
When I went to NYC in middle school we saw The King and I as well as Rent (which I mean SUPER inappropriate for a TWELVE year old to be seeing).
We also saw The Rockette’s on that trip…basically I had an incredible first visit to New York that is tough to beat (fun fact…we also met John Gotti Jr on that trip…my cousin and I sang in a random piano bar and he was there haha).
Wicked wasn’t a bad first Broadway show either 😉 Jon Stamos was there that night as well (we didn’t see him).
We both LOVED it and Zach really enjoys the theater and we see as many shows as we can anytime we visit now!
We visited Gershwin Theatre for the show (sidenote but I can’t believe Zach flew literally around the WORLD with that suit to wear for that night!) and it was truly the perfect ending to our honeymoon.
We had a SUPER late dinner at Sardi’s. Super late as in we had a 10:30 reservation. We had to get up at 3 am for our flight but wanted to YOLO (before YOLO was even a term ha!).
I was SO thankful Zach was okay with hailing a cab haha he wanted to walk to save the money but at that point in the day I was exhausted and my feet ended up with MASSIVE blisters from all the walking.
The food was amazing and neither of us were eager to get back home.
We didn’t get to bed until 1 AM and had to be up at 3 to be packed and ready for the shuttle to pick us up at 4.
Of course we got to the airport and our plane was supposed to fly out at 8 and it was postponed until 11 am so we were at JFK hanging out from 6 am until 11 am. We tried to SLEEP!
We flew from NYC to Atlanta then Atlanta to Florida and drove home from Florida!
The end of our world-wide honeymoon adventure!
I truly cannot believe we did SO MUCH in SUCH a short span of time in NYC. We really hit so many epic highlights.
I remember posting in message boards asking for help on Tripadvisor and everyone said there was NO WAY we’d be able to do all of that in such a short span of time but we proved them wrong!
It was such a fun end to our incredible honeymoon experience.
I’m so thankful for this trip and that it truly did lead us down the path of travel that we continue to enjoy today.
And thankful that I’ve ALWAYS “lived for the gram” even before there WAS a gram. So fun having ALL the pics to look back on!
Such an amazing way to begin our married life together as Mr and Mrs Parker 🙂
If you’re looking for more posts to get to know us better give these a read:
My work has been featured on Love What Matters, Today Parenting and Babywise.Life. I'm also honored to be a member of the Babywise Friendly Blog Network.
You can read more about our family on my About Me page. Also be sure to follow along with me on Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest!
- Effective Parenting Tips to Discipline a 5 Year Old Child - September 24, 2024
- Happy 9th Birthday to My Daughter – Letter to Tess from Mom - August 26, 2024
- The Best Travel High Chair for Baby and Toddler - July 11, 2024
