I had grand plans for the day 1 in New York City, which included getting up VERY early to go to the Today show plaza. Since we got in so late the night before, I decided to not try to rush to get up. One of the reasons I chose our hotel, Springhill Suites, was beause of the free breakfast. This was a great breakfast option, a good variety of hot and cold options, and a lot of good seating. An included breakfast was one of my priorities when selecting a hotel.

For our first day, we decided to just start walking! In the future, I will do less walking, and more subway! Once we did get our Metro Cards, the second day, we used the subway a lot more. It was very hot and humid this time of year, and I think less walking would have been a better option!

We were close to Macy’s and just down the street from the Empire State Building. While we were there, the Netflix show, House of Dragons, was about to come out and buildings in New York had picked houses, so the Empire State Building had a large dragon on top of it during the first part of our trip!

One of the top places on my daughter’s list was the New York City Libarary by Bryant Park. She was hoping to use their picture collection as part of her class project. We walked there and arrived just before they opened. Since we were there in June, buildings all over town were showing their support for Pride Month. My daughter is part of the queer community, and loved seeing the rainbow everywhere!

The New York City Library was absoluately beautiful! I don’t remember a time where I enjoyed the architecture of a building quite so much. Many of the rooms were recognizeable from different movie scenes and they had an exhibit with the original Winnie the Pooh dolls. Something that interested me, but not my daughter, would have been doing a walking tour. They do offer Docent-led Tours and would be worth it to see more and hear the history.

After spending time walking through the library, we went to Bryant Park. I loved the community park feel this had. It was so beautiful and we found the cutest little chairs!! Lunch, was the Whole Foods across the street from Bryant Park! Saving money was another priority, so we tried to find low cost options for lunch when we could. Whole Foods had a seating area on the second floor, so we got a few grocery items, and sat eating our lunch and overlooking Bryant Park!

After that, it was off to Time Square! I think this was a little too much for me, but it was amazing to see what I had only seen in the movies. My daughter, she was loving it!! There was even yoga going on in the middle of the square!

We had a show that night, so decided to head back to the hotel for some rest before dinner. We had not done the subway thing yet, but we should have figured it out and used it at this point. We instead walked back to the hotel. It wasn’t a horrible walk, but it was hot and humid, and our feet were feeling it.