Day 13 - New York

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Enjoyed a quiet night last night to round out our trip in Playa del Carmen. With a 7am pick-up from the resort we made sure that we did all of our packing last night so we could just get up and go.

We endured our roughest flight of the trip with it being a very cloudy day and some below average weather. It also didn't help having a young girl sitting next to us whose parents didn't know how to control her screaming.

This time I wore the appropriate clothes for the weather and arrived warm enough for the New York winter. It was 8 degrees which wasn't too bad once you get used to it.

We took a taxi and the trip is not as glamorous as the destination, many rundown/commission type housing blocks and plenty of rubbish on the freeways. We passed through Queens and went over the Queensboro bridge which looked great. As we approached Times Square, we started to gaze at all the skyscrapers and monuments however the one thing that made Lauren gasp with excitement were two poodles being walked down the street... Forget the Statue of Liberty or Empire State building, it's two poodles 😊

We arrived at our hotel, the Crowne Plaza in Times Square which is in Broadway. For those who have been here before, we are next door to the Hershey's chocolates building and across the road from the M&M's store, lots of chocolate! The hotel is maybe 100m from Times Square and couldn't be in a better spot.

We didn't have any plans for the night and were both pretty tired so at about 5pm we decided to go for a walk around a few blocks to have a look and get our bearings. New York is very easy to navigate around as the streets go one way and the avenues go the other and they are all in numerical order.

Like Hollywood there are a lot of people trying to get you to buy discounted tickets, this time to comedy shows. We've learned to be good at just ignoring them, however for some reason we stopped and talked to this guy and yes, he sucked us in. We bought two tickets, no idea what we're seeing, where it is or when it is but it had better be funny!

We walked down broadway until we got to 42nd street and then turned left towards 5th avenue. We saw the ice skating rink along the way which we'll have to do during the week. Headed back towards the hotel and had a drink at the bar, that knocked us out a little so we had a quick and easy dinner and headed up to the room. It was about 7pm and we thought we'd have a quick sleep and then have another stroll around, three hours later Loz is still out to it and I've been drifting in and out.

At least we'll be refreshed for tomorrow where we'll be aiming to go to the Empire State building and a few other things. It's also the Super Bowl tomorrow which is like Grand Final day for us so we'll head to a bar tomorrow night to see the atmosphere, it should be a good experience.

Hope everyone is keeping cool at home, sounds like it's pretty warm!

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