Onto the second leg of our journey - NEW YORK! A huge contrast to LA, we felt the excitement as soon as we arrived at the airport and heard the distinctive New Yorker accent (we have fun impersonating it…. "Oh Boiy", "cooiiffy"). After checking into to our hotel, we had to rush to get to Chelsea Pier for our "Cocoa and Carols" yacht cruise we had booked in Perth. The yacht took us past all the beautiful city lights, Brooklyn Bridge and breathtaking Statue of Liberty (I think it looks better at night!). All the while, we were served hot cocoa and cookies while carolers sang to us and led us in fun sing-alongs! It was an awesome way to start off New York and get us into the Christmassy mood.

On Christmas Eve, we started the preparations to make our Christmas just as 'christmassy' as when we are home. We both picked ourselves a gift, and bought Christmas paper, Christmas hats and Christmas themed 'Hersey Kisses' and wrapped up each others presents, (even though we both knew what they were), so we could open them on Christmas morning (Gerard used half a roll of sticky tape on my present!). We even left some of our cookies, milk and scotch for Santa - Gez said he did well to get up 16 floors to eat it all (I heard Gerard rustling about on the tray in the early hours of the morning!!).

On Christmas Day we decided to go to a church service, which was amazing, the church was HUGE, the choir was beautiful and it was an experience to see an American church service (They offer the choice of gluten free wafers for communion!). We filled the rest of day with special moments, including a horse and carriage ride through central park, hot chocolate at the iceskating rink and an amazing Christmas concert at Radio City Music Hall. To finish it off, we had dinner at a fancy restaurant overlooking the Rockefella Christmas Tree (biggest Christmas tree in America) and ice rink, where we watched as a guy went down on bended knee and proposed to his girlfriend in front of thousands of people! The atmosphere was amazing!

We didn't get a white Christmas, but the amount of snow on Boxing Day made up for it. It ended up turning into a severe blizzard (which we heard hit the news in Australia) and New York went into shutdown. The streets were abandoned, there were no cars or taxis and all flights / subways / trains were cancelled. By this time we had checked out of the hotel, preparing to go to Toronto and Niagara Falls, but after camping out in the lobby for an hour or so, finding out our flight was cancelled, reading weather channels and continued warnings about travelling in the blizzard, we decided to cancel our plans and remain in NYC. We were disappointed to lose the opportunity to see even more snow in Canada, but out of all the cities to be stranded on, we were quite happy that it was NYC.

Our next NYC experience was the craziness of the city around New Years Eve. The streets were even more full than Christmas with people from all over the world and US who had travelled to see the famous ball drop. Security was intense, cops EVERYWHERE, lots undercover in normal street clothes, bomb sniffer dogs, flashing lights and sirens and the whole of Times Square was blocked off to cars and any pedestrian who couldn't prove where they were walking to. We were staying in a cute apartment right in the middle of the action, so we had to carry a letter with us as evidence of where we were staying to show police that we had reason to be in the area! The two options for NYE in times square was to pay a huge amount of money to attend a party close to the action, or stand in a fenced off area crammed full of people from early hours of the day until midnight to catch a glimpse of the ball. We spoke to a group of people at our Chelsea Hostel who stood in the crowd for 10 hours without access to toilets, food or drink! After hearing that, we were glad we had decided to pay the money and attend a pub nearby where we met a great group of people from Perth who we shared a table with and used our 'open bar' tickets to their full advantage (eg, too many jaigerbombs, mojitos, champagne, beers etc. etc.). Let's just say the open bar wasn't as popular in the morning when we were scheduled to get up early and move hotels!!!

The last part of our NYC trip was spent in a cute Chelsea Hostel recommended by my fave cousin Bek. Bek has been the best travel agent ever, first helping us initially plan our itinerary and then sending us constant emails to remind us of 'must see' places along the way, which have allowed us to experience amazing parts of NYC. These include a visit to Magnolia Bakery to have a red velvet cupcake, as seen in Sex and the City. The queue to get into the bakery went down the street and Gez was less than impressed that we were waiting in line for a cupcake, but when he tasted it, he agreed it was worth the wait!! She also recommended we visited a cute little café called "Serendipity 3", famous for it's frozen hot chocolate! We decided to make a late night visit, thinking we would just rock up and get served, only to find there was a 1 ½ hour wait (this was at 10pm!), yes we did wait, yes it was again worth the wait! (What can I say, we love our food just like the Americans!).

Even though our room resembled a jail cell, the common room and layout of the hostel gave it an awesome atmosphere, there were people everywhere! Everyone was ready to chat to anyone, and we ended up meeting a few aussies who joined us on our late night visit to Serendipity. It was also a nice break to sit down at a big table and eat a meal that we prepared ourselves, rather than choosing something fatty from a menu. We LOVE supermarkets over here, anything you can think of is in there and they have so much fresh produce, and lots of premade packs like salads and vegetables, that can be eaten straight from the container (No dishes, woohoo!).

While is Chelsea, we went to a New York Knicks games, which was a fantastic experience. It was so cool to feel the atmosphere of a basketball game, and we attempted to fit into the crowd with our big #1 hand and Knicks caps. It was a really entertaining day! We also saw Mary Poppins and Lion King on Broadway, both which wowed us with amazing sets and costumes. Mary Poppins was a definite favourite, the music brought us both back to our childhoods, and one of us even shed a tear in a few scenes (and it wasn't Renee!!).

One thing we will miss about New York is seeing little dogs everywhere! Here they are allowed in most shops and cafes, and are often dressed in cute little outfits and little doggie boots! Everytime we see a small dog we think of our baby Ruby, and imagine how much she would love strolling the streets of New York. We even think there could be a book written about her travels called "Rubo does the Big Apple!" hahahaha, yes we really love that dog and miss her heaps!!

Our next stop is VEGAS! We are super excited about experiencing all the glitz and the glamour that we have heard so much about! We are also looking forward to a bit of luxury at the Bellagio for our 1 year wedding anniversary, after being in a few squishy hostels! J Thanks for following our adventures, more news to come!

Love to all, miss you lots,

Gez and Nae

xx