December in NYC

Last year, we decided to make part of our girls’ Christmas present a surprise trip to NYC. Although I knew my youngest would love the trip too, I knew the gift was mainly for my oldest daughter. She had wanted to go to New York since she was 10 years old. That year, she almost went on a trip to NYC and DC with her 5th grade class. Monkey Doodle was still nursing so I couldn’t go, so she chose not to go either after I promised to take her on a separate trip to see the big city. Time marched on and suddenly, she was now 18 and I had yet to take her on the trip I’d promised. I think she thought it would never happen, so we thought making it a surprise would be special.

We told the girls as they began to open their presents that this year, there would be a little less to open than in the past. They were very sweet and hid any disappointment they may have felt. After they opened a few gifts (wool socks, gloves, a coat-items we don’t need very often in Middle Georgia) , I handed each child their last gift and told them to open it. This was their “clue” gift. Each got a little something we had picked up from the Kate Spade outlet. My oldest had begun to love the designer collection a year before and I thought it would be perfect because the label literally says, ‘Kate Spade New York’.

I chose a mini pink purse for Cam and a cosmetic roll with spade earrings for Gracie. After opening these, inside each bag, I had tucked a poem inside. Each poem read “Pack your bags, we’ve got flights. We leave for this place in just two nights.” We directed them to a small bag inside of the Kate Spade bags, which each contained a puzzle. We told them they must complete the puzzles to find out where we were going.

Each girl quickly got on the floor and began to piece together the mystery. I had used pictures from a NYC calendar Gracie had in her room to cut into the puzzle pieces. I didn’t use the current page, so she never even knew I had torn them out. I had purposely made Campbell’s easier and she completed hers first. When Gracie glanced at hers saw the Statue of Liberty, she stared at me in disbelief and started to cry with excitement. I, of course, cried too because I was so happy I was bringing her this much joy. Campbell began to squeal and we all hugged. It all sounds extremely cheesy, but it was actually like a commercial. I remember even thinking at the time of the credit card commercial that lists all the amounts of things bought and the final thing of seeing the person’s response to the gift as “priceless”. That is truly what I felt at the time!

After the excitement died down and we finally convinced the girls we were really going to New York, we read this book: The Night Before Christmas in New York by Roblyn Herndon and Betty Lou Phillips. A friend, to whom I had revealed my plan, had given this to me to give to the girls. It is a sweet little book and it helped to get Campbell excited. Gracie didn’t need any help because she had been dreaming of the trip for five years.

Two days after Christmas, we left for an early flight. I had booked this trip using Southwest Vacations. I have used Southwest Vacations three times now and have been pleasantly surprised each time. The flights and the hotel are bundled together (although you have your choice of hotels and flight times) and you can usually save more money than when they are booked separately and they often come with extras like resort credits, depending on their current specials. Earlier flights usually have the best price and this turned out to be true in this case.

We flew into LaGuardia, which was under desperately needed construction. At the time of this writing, LaGuardia continues to be under construction, so you may want to check if this will affect any aspects of your trip. For us, it made the trek to catch an Uber a bit confusing. The Uber driver expressed his frustration with it as well. Joe, in true Southern gentleman style, always engages our Uber/Lyft drivers in conversation. Some don’t like to chat, but others share their life stories with him during our ride. The ride to our hotel was particularly long on this day and the ride that usually takes a little over 20 minutes, took almost an hour. It was not too bad though. Since Joe had been so friendly, our driver was courteous and acted as a tour guide and pointed out many sights along the way. This was a great introduction to the city and had no extra fee!

When we arrived at our hotel, The Westin New York at Times Square. We often stay in Westin hotels and liked this hotel. The rooms were a little small (however, they were a good size for New York), the staff was nice, and the location was great for what we wanted to do on this trip. Our room was not quite ready when we checked, so they stored our bags for us while we ventured down the block to get lunch. As we prepared to brace ourselves for the cold, I realized I had left one of my new gloves (a warm pair that were a gift from my mother and were designed allow you to use your touch screen phone). This upset me, but I did have a back-up pair, a tip I highly recommend if visiting a cold weather destination. I could have used the Uber app to report the missing glove, but there is a fee for having items returned, and I didn’t feel it was worth it in this case.

We proceeded to lunch and decided on City Kitchen, a food market in the Row NYC hotel. We found it to be a cozy, yet bustling, upscale food court. We sampled a variety of dishes: tacos from Gabriela’s, sushi from Azuki, and ramen from Kuro-Obi. They were all delicious, but my favorite dish was the yummy ramen.

During our walk back to the hotel, I quickly realized this Georgia girl is not a fan of the cold. While we were in New York City, the average temperatures were around 14 degrees Fahrenheit with a wind chill of below zero. I was perpetually aggravated by the amount of clothes I had to wear (layer up people!) but still felt cold, and transitioning from the frigid outdoor air to the warm indoor air, made my skin extremely dry. See the end of this post for a few more tips for surviving the cold if you’re not used to it like me!

We packed it in during our three days. Over the next few days, we hit some of the first-timer highlights of NYC by doing the following: walked the streets and checked out the city and the gorgeous window decorations, went to Times Square, went to the top of the Empire State Building, visited Rockefeller Center, toured the Museum of Natural History, played in Central Park, sat in awe of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, watched Christmas lights, ate yummy food , observed the hustle and bustle of crowds at Grand Central Station, ice skated, visited a Christmas market and learned to navigate the subway.

Here are some tips/highlights from our trip:

Times Square: We did the obligatory first trip to NYC, gotta see Times Square with the masses, on our first day. To my girls, this was quintessential New York. The Disney store, large Forever 21, M &M store were my girls’ favorites. I was not impressed, but I was glad we went since it was a block from the hotel and we can now check it off my list of famous things to see and do. Be prepared for the crowd. Watch for cars (they honk constantly and do not yield to pedestrians). Hold on to your kids. My little one was very anxious and feared she may lose me in the crowd. If you have a child who also feels this way, make sure you set up a place to meet if you’re separated, come up with a family safe word, and be extra vigilant about keeping them close to you.

Radio City Christmas Spectacular: The Rockettes- We attended a matinee showing of this. We could have bought tickets in advance, but I didn’t want this trip to be extremely structured and planned so we decided to wing it and choose a day and time once we were there. This made sense for this particular show because there are so many showings each day that we knew we’d get into one of them. If you have a can’t-miss show that doesn’t have multiple showings per day, I wouldn’t take this risk. We walked the few blocks from our hotel checking out the city on the way. We stopped in Magnolia Bakery (at 49th and Avenue of the Americas) and had a Red Velvet Rockette cupcake. There were many gluten-free options there for my little one who has a gluten intolerance.

Once we arrived at Radio City, we wanted to check out what tickets were available for that day and the next. We settled on tickets for the next day since we like the seats better. The promo code on the brochure and going to the box office saved us money. I had just looked at tickets online and by going in person to the box office, we saved almost $100 in fees!

When we returned the next day to watch the show, we arrived almost forty minutes early for the show. We discovered this was not early enough time as the security line to enter the building went on forever. By the time we entered the building, we were ten minutes late for the show. I would recommend arriving at least an hour prior to the show to save yourself some stress.

Grand Central Station-This was a another highlight for me. I’ve seen it in a few movies and couldn’t wait to see it. The architecture and beauty of the building did not disappoint. I’ve always liked watching travelers in airports and wondering where their journey was taking them that day and creating stories about why they were traveling. This was a perfect spot just like that. We attempted to get lunch here but again-the crowds! We wanted to sit to eat and there was nowhere to sit. We walked around for about ten minutes looking for a spot for four and finally gave up. We grabbed a snack from a bakery and ate it on our way to catch the subway.

Subway-We all thought traveling this way was fun once we figured it out. It was intimidating at first because everything moves quickly (it’s New York after all!) and we didn’t really have our bearings. I would suggest getting a map ahead of time and studying it a little so you know which trains run which way and it will be less stressful. We knew we wouldn’t use the subway a ton on our trip because most of the destinations we were visiting were within walking distance, and weren’t exactly sure how much we would use it, so we just bought one MetroCard to share and loaded a little over what we needed each day onto the card and shared it. One adult would go through the turnstiles first, then hand the card to the next family member in line, who would then use it to swipe in, and so on until we had all scanned in. We just always made sure Campbell was in between adults so there was one ahead of her and one behind her. This worked well for our family with older children. This method may not be the best for those with younger kids. I have heard other people who have been to NYC talk about the subway being dirty and scary, but we didn’t find that to be the case. My suggestions are (and I would say these for any large city): be aware of your surroundings, keep your valuables close to you and within sight, and use hand sanitizer!

Rockefeller Center- We braved the cold and crowds to view the famous tree. It lived up to the hype. We had a wonderful night watching the skaters and gazing at the tree (from afar). It, like everything else the weekend we were there, was extremely crowded. Wall-to-wall people the closer you were. We chose not to skate there as it was crowded, a long wait, and higher prices than some of the other rinks.

While we were at Rockefeller Center, we realized how close we were to Saks Fifth Avenue so we watched their incredible light display perfectly synchronized to holiday music. It was so much fun. Campbell especially loved it!

Saks in all her glory

St. Patrick’s Cathedral- The cathedral is right next door to Saks, so after watching the lights, we ventured in. This was definitely the highlight of the night. It was absolutely breathtaking. We stayed for probably thirty minutes just walking, praying, and taking in the immense beauty. No matter what denomination you are, I would suggest going here.

The Museum of Natural History- We were really excited about this museum since we had watched both of the ‘Night at the Museum’ movies. I would recommend doing that to build excitement, but also realize when you are there that many of the things from the movie are not actually in the museum. It was incredibly crowded when we were there. We waited over an hour to get inside and the photo below shows the crowd we found when we arrived. I mistakenly thought since our CityPass stated you would have “front of the line access” at many places that we could skip the line. This wasn’t the case. You can skip the ticket line-not the security line, which is what wound all the way around the building! I would love to come back here when I could actually enjoy this museum. The only place I didn’t feel claustrophobic was the ocean room. I really didn’t feel we got to fully appreciate the museum because it was so mobbed. For instance, we saw the Easter Island statue that says, “Dum dum, you give me gum gum.” My daughter was so excited because she remembered it from the movie, but was disappointed the line to take a photo was so long and decided not to wait. My advice is if you do choose to come at this time of year, get there before it opens, or wait until a couple of hours before closing. Those may be your best times to beat the crowds.

Campbell was dying to see Teddy Roosevelt!

The Metropolitan Museum of Art- We arrived at the Met later the same day we had been to the Museum of Natural History with the intention of touring the museum. The line matched the one from earlier in the day and we all decided we didn’t feel like fighting the crowds, took pictures on the steps, and vowed to come back at a less busy time on a future trip.

Central Park- After not going into the Met, we decided now would be a good time to tour Central Park since it was right next door. We didn’t see much of the huge park, but we had a good time just walking around and playing on the playground and watching people and wildlife.

Christmas Markets & Ice Skating- I would recommend visiting one of the Christmas markets. There were multiple markets throughout the city and the boroughs. We chose Bryant Park because it was centrally located to the area we chose for this trip and it had an ice-skating rink. We spent a little bit of time exploring the shops. We all wondered at the frozen fountain and the girls enjoyed skating while my husband and I enjoyed the area upstairs where non-skaters could sit and watch skaters or play a game. The skating prices were cheaper than at Rockefeller Center and it was much less crowded, so we were glad we came here for them to skate. We were there earlier in the day and I would recommend that if you want more room to skate. It seemed to get more crowded the longer we were there.

Lombardi’s Pizza-We loved the NoLita neighborhood around this old pizzeria and would’ve loved to come back. We enjoyed the delicious pizza and feel it is definitely worth going to the oldest pizzeria in America. We took the subway back to Times Square and watched them set up stages for the NYC New Year’s Eve television specials before heading to the airport.

Empire State Building- Our CityPass did get us to the front of the line here. This is one of the quintessential New York things you just have to do. Once you see the view, you will understand why. I know a lot of people argue the Top of the Rock is a better view. I can’t comment because although we could have gone with our CityPass, when we tried to go one evening, all the tours for the evening were full and we never made it back.

View from the Empire State Building

Other random tips about visiting this time of year:

o Be prepared for crowds. While New York City is always crowded, this time of the year is extremely crowded. On our last day, the crowds really started pouring into our area and streets were being closed off. Unless you are planning to be around Times Square for the NYE celebrations because it is on your bucket list, I’d steer clear of the area. We noticed the streets start being blocked off in some areas as early as December 29th. Check with your hotel or locals in the area about closures as this may affect your plans in the nearby area.

o Look into getting a CityPass or other similar type of pass. Look at what each pass offers based on the activities you would like to do on your trip. CityPass worked for us and saved us money and time.

o Check the weather until the day before the trip and prep for the cold. The cold affected clothes, itinerary, and skincare for us.

o Clothes: It was colder than predicted on our trip and we needed the warm base layers we packed. Merino wool or Under Armor are good ones. Dress in layers. I made sure we all had good coats, a couple of pairs of gloves (the older people in our group had gloves that could work with our phones-I highly recommend these!), scarves, hats, earmuffs, etc. We all got new boots and I made sure they were all waterproof so they would stand up to rain, snow and ice if we got any (we did), and I wanted to make sure they were warm and comfy too because I knew we would walk a ton.

o Skincare: I made sure to add rose water spray to my bag. I like to travel with it because my skin gets dry on planes & this helps to moisturize it. I also used a heavier moisturizer than I usually use on the trip since I knew we’d be doing a lot of walking in the cold air and that also has a drying effect. Remember to moisturize your lips and use body lotion each day too. Hairspray helps a little with the static that I get from hats. I usually spray a little on my hair and on my brush. I’ve also used dryer sheets and rubbed them on my hair and hats and this helps too.

o Be flexible. You won’t be able to do it all in just a few days. We didn’t get to see a show at the theater this trip, but it wasn’t the end of the world. We’ll be back (when it’s not so cold ha ha!). Enjoy your trip!