Discover New York in 3 days!

I have recently returned from a quick stopover in New York before we cruised out of Brooklyn down to the Bahamas.

It really was a whistle stop tour of New York before we boarded MSC Meraviglia for a 7 night sailing in search of some winter sun. 

We flew directly into Newark from Edinburgh and it made such a nice change being able to fly direct from Edinburgh than our usual route over to the USA via London. This also meant we had a nice and early arrival into New York. The flight landed at 12.20 and we were on the Air Train en route to the hotel by 1.30pm. I think this was the quickest immigration we have ever experienced.

We decided to take public transport from Newark as we had heard it was super easy. It really was, we got off the train at Penn Station and walked around 15 minutes up to Times Square to our hotel.

We stayed just off Times Square in the Riu Plaza Manhattan hotel. It was a great location for getting around. We quickly checked in, dropped our bags off and headed back out. We didn’t make too many plans for New York as we were only staying for 2 nights. We had pre-booked Summit One for 6pm on our arrival day so we just stayed local to the hotel.

With no real plans we just decided to wander, we visited Bryant Park as the winter village was still in full swing. If you are headed to New York for a Pre Christmas break make sure you pay a visit to see the Ice Skaters. We also had a look around Grand Central Station, this really does give you a Wow when you walk in and brings back memories of all the films it's been in.

This left us really close to Summit One Vanderbilt. This is an immersive experience 1100 Ft over Maddison Avenue. We spent around an hour here and you could have maybe spent a little longer but Jet Lag was kicking in and we did find it really busy.

Now for day 2 and we were up early. Our first stop was to grab breakfast at Bubby’s which was incredible.

We took the Subway from Times Square down to Franklin Street as we came out of the station we realised we were at the Ghostbusters Headquarters! A Quick photo opportunity and then for Breakfast. Fuelled up for the day we wandered down to the 9/11 Memorial Museum. We spent around 3 hours here around the memorial and museum.

With no real plans for the rest of the day we decided to take the ferry across to Dumbo and headed to the Time Out market for lunch. This was a huge indoor venue with different pop up restaurants. You could order from any of the restaurants and it was delivered to your table, no arguing over what we were going to eat as we all decided on something different!

This was really close to Dumbo so a quick photo opportunity before we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge back into Manhattan.

As we came off the Brooklyn Bridge we could hear lots of noise and headed towards Chinatown. We stumbled across a huge party in Chinatown with it being Lunar New Year. The atmosphere was really something else. We stayed here for a while taking in all the sights and sounds.

From here with sore feet from all the walking we took the Subway back up to Times Square to our hotel.

 Day 3 and we are off on our cruise. I ordered an Uber to take us straight to the cruise terminal. Far cheaper than a pre-booked transfer or a local yellow cab that only cost $80. We were on board by 11.30am and found the whole check in really smooth.

We took this cruise as it was half term and we wanted some winter sun. We have sailed with MSC before and find they work well for us as a family as our teen Charlie enjoys the facilities on board from the Waterslides, indoor sports area, bowling, ropes course and the F1 Simulator.

Overall we had the BEST time in New York, although it was an incredibly busy experience!