We’ve now been home from our amazing trip to New York for a few days now and I definitely have post-holiday blues right now so I thought today would be a good day to share our second day with you
If you’ve had a chance to read my last post, you’ll know was a holiday we booked pretty last minute so didn’t get the chance to save as much spending money as we would have liked.
Day two of our trip was the busiest by far as we did two days worth of things in just the one day.
We decided to head to Dumbo in Brooklyn for our second day and rather than get an Uber (which was tempting) we decided to head down underground and try out the subway for the first time as we knew we could travel directly from the subway station near our hotel to the station nearest Brooklyn Bridge for just $3 each.
I’m not going to lie to you, I didn’t like the subway at all. After being pushed about by a group of people who all seemed to be travelling together, standing in something that I think was vomit and being directed to a machine to buy tickets that wouldn’t accept my bank card and wasn’t taking cash, I decided that as much as I wanted to save money, an Uber was the way to go.
We headed back up to the street and called an Uber which took us directly to the start of Brooklyn Bridge for $19 which believe me, was worth every penny of the extra that we paid.
Subway drama over, we walked across Brooklyn Bridge together enjoying the views of the skyline and getting a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty and once we got to the other side, we headed straight into Dumbo where the first thing we did was join the crowd of people all wanting to get the same photo…
I’m not joking, there were people taking their lives into their own hands posing in the middle of the road so oncoming traffic had to swerve around them. Clearly, it’s an Instagram photo hotspot! I did get lots of photos as you’d expect but honestly, my favourite was this one where Miss Frugal jumped in front of the camera just as I was about to take the photo – I think this is now my favourite photo of the two of them ever!
After that, we headed down the street to One Girl Cookies which is a super pretty little coffee shop and another Instagram hotspot filled with people taking photos of their food and drink. I’d never do something like that. 😉
We had breakfast in One Girl Cookies which was made up of hot chocolate, chai lattes and bacon muffins and came to about $23 if I remember rightly.
After filling up and taking way more photos of just about everything in the cafe than necessary, we headed out into the cold to explore Dumbo which actually stands for ‘Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass’. The views of the Manhattan skyline are amazing and walking down by the Hudson River is so serene at times and you’d never believe how close you were to such a busy city – I must admit it would have been lovelier if it had been a bit warmer though! Because it was cold, we didn’t explore as much as I would have liked but we still had a lovely little wander before we walked back over the bridge to go in search of something indoors to do.
In the end, we decided that because we were so close to the One World Trade Centre and the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, we’d head there instead of doing that on another day as we’d originally planned. This saved us money too as it saved us having to pay for travel back over to this area – even if we’d braved the subway again and managed it that would have still been $20 for the return journey.
It’s not a long walk from the end of the bridge to the 9/11 Memorial so it didn’t take long at all to get there although we couldn’t remember how to get there so we stalked a walking tour group who we presumed were heading that way. After a brief stop ay the Woolworth building and learning a little about that, they did make it to the memorial at which point we left our new friends.
I’ve seen the memorial before but it still took my breath away as it really brings home the sheer scale of the size of the sites of the Twin Towers and to imagine the area as it was before the events that changed history in 2001.
It’s extremely emotional and sobering seeing the memorial with the names of all of the victims inscribed on it and even though we’d pre-booked tickets for the museum itself, I genuinely considered not going in at that point. I was worried it would be too upsetting for the kids (and me) so instead, we headed over to the One World Observatory.
I was a bit nervous – mostly about the lift ride up for some reason as it travels 102 floors in just 47 seconds but I made it up there and it turned out to be one of the best things we did when we were there. The skies were so blue and clear that we had amazing views of the whole of New York. This is definitely something that needs a post of its own so keep your eyes out for that but in the meantime, I’ll leave you with this view…
We had a cheeky Starbucks for lunch with a muffin each as we weren’t hugely hungry and while we were sat down, we had a chat and decided that we would do the 9/11 museum after all and although I’m pleased that we did it, it’s definitely something I won’t ever forget. I’ve started to write up my experience of the museum but it’s so hard to write down just how it made me feel – it was obviously very sad but it was more than that and that’s what I’m struggling to get across.
We were pretty much done after the museum so we got an Uber back to the hotel where we ate takeaway from Chipotle on our bed for tea.
Day 2 – Money Spent
Uber to Brooklyn Bridge $19
Breakfast $23
Lunch $20
Uber back to hotel $20
Tea from Chipotle $35
Pre-booked The One World Observatory as part of a duo-attraction ticket
Pre-booked 9/11 Memorial museum
Again, I don’t think that’s a bad day when we have no option but to eat out – I did consider a picnic from the supermarket but it wouldn’t have been that much cheaper and we would have had to carry it around and eat outside. We were glad of the warm that breakfast and lunch gave us so I wouldn’t have changed what we did to save the small amount of money it would have saved us.
Find out what we did on Day 1 here and keep your eyes peeled for our day 3 diary.
Don’t miss out on future posts like this – receive updates directly to your inbox by email by adding your email address here and hitting subscribe. You can also follow me on Twitter, BlogLovin or Networked Blogs and I’d love to see you over on my Facebook page and on Instagram. You can find out more about me here.
