Celebrating 20 Years NY style

Andy and I splurged this year for our anniversary.  We visited NYC for the first time ever.  It will take days to process all we saw and get it out on the blog.  I am heading out of town again tomorrow, so I cannot share all we saw and did, but I am going to try and get some pictures out tonight.  My interest in the trip was piqued by a photography tour, and I learned so much and took over 700 pictures.

We arrived on Tuesday June 16th with just enough time left that night to explore our surroundings a bit and get our first bite of NY pizza.  During our walk we saw our first rat.  What a welcome!

A bit of info on NYC on a shoestring budget before I move forward.  Andy and I rented a studio apartment, much cheaper than finding a good, reasonably priced hotel.  We found our place on HomeAway, and I read through numerous reviews before committing.  I needed three things in my place to stay while in NYC: affordability, free or reasonably priced parking, and super clean (with no bed bugs).  Our apartment delivered on all three quite nicely, and we were mere blocks from the subway, so transportation was easy.

I paid for an affordable walking photography tour before we arrived.  It was part of the reason for choosing NYC as our anniversary destination.  Other than that we did not pay for any tours.  Our biggest expenses other than lodging were tolls for the drive into the city (just under $40 each way) and Metro cards ($30 each for unlimited use for our entire stay).  We would have paid for cabs but found the subways to be convenient enough that we did not use them.

We hit the ground running on Wednesday (June 17) morning, starting with NY bagels on our way to catch the subway.

The cathedral is the first picture of many beautiful cathedrals I took.  We love the architecture of the old churches, and this one was right at the end of the street on which we stayed.

 First Stop -Central Park

We chose to explore Central Park right off the bat.  It was one item on our must-see itinerary.  

Without realizing it, we started our tour right at Strawberry Fields, so my Beatles/John Lennon fan of a husband was thrilled.  We actually returned later so that he could see the Dakota which we missed inadvertently (really glad we returned to see that beautiful building).

Classic central park scene with the city in the background.

Bow Bridge

Another Cathedral on Cathedral Avenue had these signs which amused us.

The one thing Andy really wanted to do was take a run in Central Park.  The heat along with the subway ride did not allow for his usual run, but he did go for a 7/10 of a mile run while we toured the upper portion of the park.

a wide open space of green in the city

This concludes part 1 of day 1

(keep in mind that all pictures can be seen bigger just by clicking on them)