Hello, we are back again with more travel experiences from One Ticket Please. I am Kaustubh Vade, the author of One Ticket Please. I am a travel blogger by profession and currently, I’m staying in Kalamazoo Michigan. I’ve been in the United States for like 6 months now and it has been a wonderful experience apart from my studies which I’m doing right now. I study at Western Michigan University by the way. Most importantly, I love to travel along whenever I get my vacations and stuff.
This blog is my travel experience from Kalamazoo, Michigan to New York City. So, if you’re expecting any informative blog this is not the place to be. The other blogs regarding New York city are posted on our website which is linked here. But I’m sure my experience is going to be pretty different. My point of view about looking at things is a completely different perspective. I hope you enjoy reading this blog and let’s go on.
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Also to spice it up and give a more effective conclusion to this blog I would say that I’m a student and this blog will help you plan your New York City trip in an already pocket and budget-friendly manner. So let’s keep the dice rolling.
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Alright, so it was my first long vacation in the United States the month was March and the day was 30th. My spring break was already started. Since it was my first semester here in the United States I was pretty pumped about my studies. I was working really hard to get my grades right which expected me to spend a lot of my time indoors, studying. And yeah at some point time you could really get bored after being stuck in a single place for like 3 months now so I planned a trip to New York City.
New York City was never the first option. We had second thoughts since we heard that New York City is an expensive place to visit. And usually, people from the north side of the United States spend their spring break down south. People go to Tampa, people go to Miami, Texas, and all such places. So yeah, every other place was super expensive for us. Actually, not the city itself nor the accommodation, but the flight tickets were quite expensive. On top of that, the flight was our only option to reach any destination.
After spending around five days on this planning we finally decided that the flight to New York was affordable for all of us. And hence started to plan an itinerary accordingly. Maybe the flights were cheaper because New York in April 2021 was facing serious pandemic issues. So people were less likely to visit or take a trip to New York. It was a tough time for New York.
Moreover, some of us still don’t believe that we got a flight ticket from Detroit to Newark just for $27 one way. That’s crazy, right?
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After we booked the flight tickets, we packed our bags almost a week before our trip and were excited about our vacation. That’s how the days before we were supposed to leave Kalamazoo to Detroit ended. It all started randomly and was a very unexpected trip but everything went the best way it could possibly be.
We were a group of 7 people including me. I was the one who guided and planned the entire vacation. It was D-Day, we had a flight from Detroit to Newark at 7:15 a.m. from Detroit airport on the 30th of March. However, we had no other option than to leave Kalamazoo using a Greyhound bus because no Amtraks were available late at night on the 29th of March. We left from Detroit bus station to the Detroit International Airport and after 4 hours we were on our airplane to Newark.
Day 1 Starts here
The flight landed before time so we had enough time for other activities in New Jersey. The flight was supposed to be landing at 8:57 a.m. but landed at 8:35 AM. We picked up all our luggage and took a bus to ‘Newark Penn Station’ from Terminal-A of Newark Airport and then a Subway to Journal Square, New Jersey. There it was, our first destination of the trip, Little India.
I will definitely recommend you going to Little India. This place is right across to the Journal Square subway station around a 0.2 miles walk from the station. It is a street filled with loads of Indian stores, restaurants, cafes, and some shopping centers. I’d highly recommend eating some spicy Indian food Bad V8 at Minar, Rajbhog, Bikanerwala end Bengali sweet house. And don’t get your expectations too high. There’s no match to eating the desi food in India than elsewhere. No matter how hard they try it. It is just an honest opinion.
Furthermore, we took a Subway from Journal Square to the World Trade Center terminal. World Trade Center terminal is one of the most beautifully constructed Subway stations in New York City. The WTC terminal just gives us an exit right underneath the massive Freedom Tower. Okay, so just a quick history about World Trade Center. It used to be a complex of buildings in the Lower Manhattan Financial District, New York. In 1973 they had an addition of WTC, one of the tallest buildings in the world which had a height of almost 415 meters. In addition to this, it stood as a symbol of World Trade. But after the Attacks of September 11, 2001, these towers were completely destroyed to the grounds. The US government decided to make a 9/11 memorial where the buildings were destroyed and then started again, now known as the freedom tower.
Freedom tower serves the same purpose as World Trade Center did, and it is now an even more enormous building that houses 103 stories within. For those who are interested in taking a view of the Lower Manhattan skyline of New York, the World One Observatory is the best place for you. This tower is one of the highest in the Western Hemisphere and has an observatory that is located on the 103rd floor of the Freedom Tower.
I would definitely recommend you to visit the Freedom Tower at night. The night view of the Manhattan skyline is worth the watch. It is $10 more than the usual tickets so it’s all up to you. also, the subway station is really pretty in the evening.
Next of we took walk from the World Trade Center Freedom Tower to Whitehall South Ferry. There is a free ferry ride from New York City to Staten Island and will give you a closer view of the Statue of Liberty. Now this will take you close to the Statue of Liberty and not exactly to the Liberty Island. Otherwise, there are a lot of options of ferries that take you straight to Liberty Island but all these are expensive options. I believe a $50 ferry to Liberty Island is definitely not affordable for a pocket-friendly trip.
We got on that Ferry that took us from Lower Manhattan, Battery Park to Staten Island in 15-minute. It really gave us a closer look at the Statue of Liberty. Furthermore, it was really pretty as the evening descended and the sun was about to set. The orange sky was really really really pretty, besides we could see the Liberty literally glowing in the sky. And man o man that day it was windy which made the Hudson so aggressive. It literally felt as if the ferry bounced on the waves of the Hudson.
We managed to get some nice pictures of the Statue of Liberty from the ferry at 7 and since I drove past by Statue to the island it didn’t even make that of a difference. After that, we went to a nearby park and relaxed there for almost 30 minutes. The park is right next to the Whitehall Ferry and it is known as The Battery Park. It is not only a perfect viewing point for the Statue of Liberty from the Manhattan side but also is a World War II War casualties Memorial it is a pretty nice place to be and hang around.
Since we planned this trip within a really short time we didn’t have any place to stay in the Manhattan region. That is why we booked our Airbnb house in the upper North Region of Brooklyn in Astoria, Queens. We did not go to our Airbnb directly because we wanted to explore Lower Manhattan as we had a tight schedule. We all carried our luggage for the entire day as we explored the above-mentioned places.
It was almost 6:30 in the evening and we still had 45 minutes to get back to our Airbnb. Thus, we decided to take a subway from the Whitehall ferry to Steinway Street. It was the nearest Subway station to our Airbnb. Finally, we got off at Steinway Street which we afterward realized was the wrong subway station. We had to walk for six blocks to reach our Airbnb with all our bags. On top of that, no one had enough sleep since the day we left for the trip.
We reached our stay at around 7:45 p.m. Then we quickly got refreshed. We thought of watching a movie but we all were very tired so went straight to bed.
This was how you spent day one in NYC. Furthermore, there will be an upcoming blog about the rest of the trip. Stay tuned for more adventures and fun. I hope my experience was informative and helpful for all who desire to visit New York. Let us know what was your favorite part of our day one in NYC and what you could’ve done differently.
Happy Travel!
