New York, USA, 17.-27.6.2012, Day 1.

It's been a long break but, fear not, that's going to change right now with almost four weeks' worth of trips to update about! This summer, I've spent time in New York, Copenhagen, Gothenburg, Brussels and Paris, and I'm hoping to be able to keep you entertained with my stories for a long time now. I'm also hoping to book some new trips soon - I mean come on, how else are you supposed to survive having to go back to work in a couple of weeks? Autumn Break is basically just around the corner anyway, so I need to come up with something...

Anyway, my first and biggest trip of the summer was my trip to New York with my mum and her friend Satu. This was my big birthday trip - yup, I'm 30 now, and so far it's been the most perfect age I can think of. Amazing things have happened and I feel really happy about having left my 20s behind, and about life in general, too. But yes, back to the trip. We had a direct flight to JFK from Helsinki, and when you don't have to change planes in the middle of the trip, the flight actually feels pretty short! It's an eight-hour flight, approximately, but somehow the time just goes by really fast and before you know it, you find yourself in a taxi to Manhattan. This time we indeed took the taxi downtown as there were three of us and it was quite practical. Plus it's fun to arrive in NYC in a yellow cab ;)! The taxi from JFK to our hotel cost $50,30 so it's wasn't too bad when you don't have to pay all of it alone. I have to say that the taxi driver was a bit reckless with his driving (like, VERY reckless), so if you want to feel a bit more safe, just take the bus downtown.

We stayed at Herald Square Hotel, which was a nice place just around the corner from Macy's and a very short walk from Times Square. It was a bit on the expensive side for me - my share was around 700€, for ten nights - and I'd have preferred staying somewhere a lot cheaper (as you know, I usually prefer hostels, or at least very cheap hotels), but my mum and Satu weren't too keen on the kind of accommodation I had in mind so I had to compromise. But, it was a nice hotel, we had two big double beds and a bathroom of our own, so I guess it was worth it - just this once, though. I have better things to spend my money on than hotels :D!

Oh look, it's the Empire State Building! The very nice view from our hotelroom window :).

We arrived at our hotel at around 6 pm, I think, and after getting settled, we went for a short walk to explore our surroundings a bit. Basically what we did was walk to Times Square and back before going to bed pretty early. I don't usually have any jetlag when I travel to the USA (coming back is a different thing) but I have to say we were all pretty knackered so sleeping was a good idea.

Times Square.

My spicy chicken pizza, yum!

The rest of our days were all action-packed, so stay tuned for more...