Girls Trip New York City with Amber and April

Amber and I were so excited to take time out of mom life and go exploring together. We knew what a treat this was!! Meanwhile, we both heard the same comments when our family members heard that we were going to go to New York City together, just the two of us.

“You and Amber are going to New York…….by yourselves?”

“You and April are going to go to New York…by yourselves??

This was always spoken with a questioning tone and probably raised eyebrows.

Amber and I laughed about it. We acknowledged up front that it isn’t perfect. Right. We have no sense of direction. When you add our direction senses up together we are combined a 4 on a scale of 1 to 10, with Amber maybe being a little better off than I am.

But do we know the city?

No. Amber had never even been.

But do we have a stellar plan, complete with subway maps or an Uber app?

Also no. Neither of us have those apps.

What DID we have?

Well, we had optimism, bus tickets, and money. Yes, we obviously have just what we needed for a day in New York City.

Bus tickets. I feel like all great stories begin with the sentence, “we decided to take the bus.” I’m sitting here laughing at my own joke, but the bus TO NYC was probably our best decision of the day. It was getting to the bus that proved to be tricky, and don’t even get us started on the impossibility of catching the TopView tour bus once inside the city.

Let me tell you the story of our day in the Big Apple.

At 8 am, once we’d had our coffee and gotten ready, I realized my driver’s license wasn’t in the little driver’s license slot of my wallet. Then I remembered putting it in my coat pocket the day before, when Amber and I were touring D.C. Also I recalled that things kept falling out of said pocket. Before I even wasted the time hunting around sheepishly, I knew exactly where my license was. It was on the streets of D.C. somewhere, maybe even buried under dead leaves or in a trash can.

I no longer had a driver’s license. Now this isn’t so big of a deal if you live in the state where you are licensed to drive, but of course with this lovely complicated military spouse life I lead, that is not the case. I had a Georgia driver’s license. Getting a new one would be tricky.

Alan did his best to convince us that Amber should drive to the bus station, which is a solid 20-30 minutes away. You could tell he was nervous about this. He packed my extra shoe cushions in my bag (which I was extremely thankful for), checked up on us throughout the day, and stuck all sorts of extra things in my bag.

We took a photo of Amber driving, but I didn’t want to make Amber drive, so we pulled over before leaving the neighborhood and switched drivers. Don’t worry. I drove super slowly. We almost missed the bus I drove so slowly. In fact, I missed a turn, as usual, and we were the last 2 to board the bus. Go figure.

You’ll all be happy to know that I am now officially a licensed Maryland driver. My new license came in the mail Thursday.

We were the very last people on the bus, which meant we couldn’t sit together. The bus ride is over 3 hours long, and Alan had made sure we’d brought phone chargers with us. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the actual plugs, and these seats required electrical plugs not USB ports, so we had to be sparing of our battery usage. Altogether, it wasn’t a bad ride though. Amber sat right in front of me.

We arrived in Manhattan around 12, starving, so we quickly found a Five Guys and ate there.

There really was no trouble until we couldn’t figure out where our Top View bus pick-up was. We purchased tickets for one of those double-decker hop-on-hop-off type tour buses in advance. I’ve always wanted to do one of those in New York City.

It took us probably 20 minutes to find the bus stop, but it felt longer because we were in an uninteresting section of the city called the Garment District. We passed 5 fur stores in a row.

People were friendly to us all day though. I gotta say, after having done a trip with Alan and a trip without him, people, and I don’t mean men, I mean all people in general, are nicer to women traveling without men than to a family traveling with an intimidating looking man like Alan. Alan’s really tall and has a serious face. I guess when it’s only Amber and me we just seem more approachable.

We finally found the bus stop we were looking for, but I was still learning to use the Top View app, so I didn’t know what time it would arrive. We stopped in a pizza restaurant to use the ladies’ room, and that’s when I saw on the app that the bus was arriving in only 2 minutes. Panic!! We RAN from the pizza place to the bus stop, only to watch the bus pull away and not wait for us at all.

Disappointment and despair. There we were, basically lost, and the next bus wouldn’t be around for another 20 minutes.

At that point, we decided to switch plans. We walked to the nearest subway station, and rode it to the Staten Island Ferry stop. The subway was very easy to use, if you know what stop you are going to, and thankfully the Staten Island one is obvious because it’s the end of the line. It’s hard to mess that up, so that was our saving grace.

Ticket salesmen for other tours harassed me from the moment I stepped off the subway until we were safely in the ferry station doors. No one said a word to Amber. For a self-proclaimed “small-town girl,” she is far better at not making eye-contact with people than I am. I absolutely must work on my walking straight forward technique.

The Staten Island Ferry was even easier to get onto than the subway. It’s a free ride. You just walk in the building, wait for the next boat, walk on, and pick a seat. It drives right past the Statue of Liberty, so you take your photos, get off on Staten Island, wait for the next boat and head back over.

People hog the windows, so we learned that positioning yourself well is very important. After missing out on the best windows on the way out, we glued our feet to the best spot we could get on the way back and refused to move until we’d gotten all the photos we needed.

After the ferry, we were hoping to still catch one of those Top View buses we’d already paid for.

The app simply would never update us on when the bus would be arriving. We waited for quite a while, grew impatient with it, plus it was freezing, and headed back down to the subway. After all, the other thing Amber had on her short list of must-sees was the World Trade Center museum and memorial, and it was close by. It’s close by enough to walk to if you’re good at making correct turns, but we decided the subway would be a safer bet for us.

Subway Problems

There’s always some kind of problem. Always. Amber slid her card, and it didn’t let her through, but it took her money. She slid it again. Double charged her and still the door didn’t open. Grrrr! So now Amber’s stuck on the other side, having double paid, and I’m already through. Thankfully, a hip looking twenty-something girl had stopped to ask me directions.

Pause a minute. haha! She asked ME for directions. Too funny. I couldn’t help her, but she did reach over and open some kind of emergency door off to the side, so Amber walked through onto the platform without losing even more money. We thanked her, wished her luck, and moved on. New York City is a tough city to navigate.

We proudly managed to get on the right train and found our stop easily.

One World Trade Center

Time was beginning to run short, but the museum and memorial were important to us, so this was our last real stop.

First, we found this beautiful subway stop. Look at this place.

We even hit a little GOOD luck at the 9/11 museum. Lines for the museum can be long, but we arrived only a couple hours before closing, so lines were almost nonexistent. Tickets are around $26/person, but it was worth it.

The 9/11 museum and memorial did NOT disappoint.

The 9/11 museum is every bit as emotional as you’d expect it to be. We teared up a few times, and the more you stop and take it in, the more it gets to you.

This museum was so powerful. They have a photo wall, where you aren’t allowed to take pictures, of every single 9/11 victim who died. I was struck by how many faces were firemen and police officers. Not only did people die from these acts of terrorism, but we lost some of our best people.

As I looked at the images around us, I thought of how many of us sent our loved ones to war as a result of this day. How many of our brightest men and women never returned. I thought of the souvenirs my husband found (when he was in Iraq the first time, in 2003) of goods celebrating 9/11. Yes, they were selling cigarette lighters that lit up the towers when you’d open it and had Bin Ladin’s picture on them. The U.S. was in mourning. They were laughing and selling souvenirs. It’s beyond maddening.

I’m going to tell you much more about the 9/11 Memorial and Museum in a future post. Between Amber and me, we took a billion more photos of the museum.

After we exited the 9/11 museum, there was the memorial. The memorial is two giant square fountains where the towers once stood and with all the names of the victims on the fountains. It’s a beautiful tribute.

We left with a sense of satisfaction and urgency. What was important, we had seen, and now we were hungry and not wanting to get left by our bus back to Baltimore.

We got onto the train platform without drama, but then I panicked. Nowhere had it said which subway stop to use to catch the bus on 38th Street. Or was it 42nd? I’ve already forgotten. Amber and I froze, staring at the open doors to a train, not knowing whether or not to go in.

And that’s when we met her. Our NYC guardian angel, complete with nose ring and puffer jacket. She jammed herself between the doors and held them back with her arms, making me feel downright silly about that time I thought I was dying because I got stuck in the subway doors. Haaaa!

“Where are you going?” she demanded.

“Oh! Uh..uptown..”

“Yes. Get on this one! This is the one. Get on.”

“Yes! Thank you!” Amber and I shuffle ran onto the train.

We thanked her profusely, and then she asked us where we were going specifically and told us exactly what stop to get off. I honestly do not think we would have made it to our bus on time if she had not helped us. We barely made it as it was.

I run into these kind of people who help me all the time! You will never convince me they are coincidences. God watches over us and nudges people and helps where he deems necessary. I’m one of those people that require constant intervention too. If there’s an angel assigned to me, he’s a busy one!

Once again, Amber and I didn’t get to sit together, but we were right across the aisle, so we were almost sitting together. It was 11 or 12 by the time we made it home that night. Everyone was asleep. My own dog barked and howled up a storm at us for coming in so late. I love what a good guard dog she is.

All in all, New York City turned out to be a fairly stressful adventure. Amber and I might would rather see a waterfall or a state park next time, or maybe that’s just me. I wouldn’t trade those days of getting to hang out with my cousin for anything, though.

We joked all day long about what our mothers and grandmother would say if they could see us now, traveling through New York City on our own. Oh, how they’d laugh. We were both so thankful we got to do this, craziness and all.

Our only advice: Don’t bother with TopView Tour buses.