American dream - New York

September 15, 2018

Hello, everybody,

Now that I have finished with my Italy trip, let's look at what happened last year.
Well, last year I went to USA for the first time and it was quite an experience, that is for sure.

I flew from Bucharest to New York, landing on JFK after a 12 hours flight. Unfortunately, there is no direct flight from Bucharest and we chose Air Serbia, meaning that we first stopped in Belgrade and from there straight to NY.
I haven't flown with them before, but it was quite a good flight. I would fly with them again for sure.
Not to mention the price which was a bargain, comparing with other rates - 500 Euros back and forth.

After landing, I stayed at a friend's house in a small city near Atlantic City, called Egg Harbour. I will tell you about that in another post.
In NY we stayed for 3 days and we went there by bus from Atlantic city - the ride there takes like 2 hours and a half.

NY is a lovely city, but for some reason I did not feel safe, although all we did was to walk around Manhattan and we stepped just a little bit in Brooklyn.
We walked a lot and we used the subway only when we were way too tired. NY is for sure a very crowded and noisy city and not very clean unfortunately. I would go there again to visit, but I do not understand the hysteria of wanting to live there.

Accomodation:

Well, we wanted to stay in lower Manhattan, close to the financial district and we chose the Soho Garden Hotel, located on Canal Street.
The good thing about the hotel is that a subway station is right downstairs and if you go on foot from there to Brooklyn bridge, it takes like 20 minutes max. But other than that I would not reccommend it. For sure I would stay somewhere else, if I were to visit again.
The room was extremely small - the door was opening in the bed :)
The street is very noisy - unless you have ear plugs, you cannot sleep. And the street itself did not seem very safe either. There are a lot of street merchendisers, selling fakes and they seemed shady.

What to eat:

I have lost weight in USA, if you can believe that :)
I have some pictures of the food, if you scroll all the way down, but everything was greasy and there is sugar in all the ingredients used.
I tried their bagels - not impressed. I tried the hot-dogs from the street vendors, like you see in the movies, - not impressed by that either. What impressed me was that a hot dog cost 4 Euros. In Romania I would have bought 16 hot dogs from Ikea on that money :) - ain't that a bitch? :))
I also tried the corn dog - wtf :)) - why would someone dip meat in honey and call it good food? jesus christ
The only thing I loved was their cookie dough ice-cream. For sure that was one of the best ice-creams. If we don't think about gelato italiano of course :)

What to do:

Plenty to do :)

Just start walking.
The buildings are huge and very very tall. If you are claustrophobic, you might have some issues :)
You don't have to miss the Empire State adventure. The view of NY from 80 something floor is simply breathtaking.
Brooklyn bridge is also quite nice, although it is very crowded.
Grand Central Station is a must, Times Square of course, Central Park, etc - just google what to do in NY and for sure you will not get bored :)
In the meantine, enjoy the pictures I took :)