That title is a Taylor Swift song reference for all my friends back home sitting in an online queue to buy concert tickets 😉 but also relevant as we arrived at 7.20am at JFK airport. A driver (airport transfers were organised by the travel agent) was waiting to take us into the city, which took over an hour with all the traffic.

Our room wasn’t ready when we arrived (check-in isn’t officially until 3pm but we just thought we would ask if they would mind our luggage), so we decided to walk off our jet lag and explore our near surroundings. We walked through Riverside Park (home of many Law & Order scenes, which Belle asked me to stop referencing because I was scaring her that she might find a body or part thereof hidden in the greenery haha).

We enjoyed the walk and ended up walking north for over an hour, when we ended up at Columbia University. They had several open day type events happening, and there were many parent and young adult combinations exploring the uni and their future study options, so we looked like we fit right in! It is a beautiful campus, and I will look for an online course to do there when I get home – especially after buying a couple of uni-branded souvenirs 😉

We headed back to our accommodation via Broadway, so that Abi could get a photo outside a cafe called “Tom’s Restaurant”, and we could also get a photo outside The Belnord Apartments (exterior used to film the location of the Arconia, a fictional apartment block in “Only Murders in The Building” starring Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez). We were so exhausted from all our walking by then, that we stopped in a cafe Abi found called “Joe & The Juice”. We shared a toasted chicken and avocado sandwich and an acai bowl between us to power us to keep us going. We then spent over half an hour in a Barnes & Noble bookstore, and Abi has some photos to send to her work group chat. That was only five blocks from our accommodation, so we returned just before the official check-in time.

Once in the room, we congratulated each other on not only surviving the day but getting to see and do some interesting things, and took turns showering (not having had one since we left home on Tuesday evening!) and unpacking. When Abi came out of the bathroom, she found Belle and I had both given in and fallen asleep! So she sensibly set an alarm and decided to rest for an hour too. Once that alarm broke our slumber, we decided to head in a different direction and find something for dinner before dark. We walked in the direction of Central Park (which Belle will also not go near at nighttime because of all the Law & Order episodes I’ve seen), and came across a Shake Shack facing the Museum of Natural History. We then headed back to our hotel as the sun started to set.

I feel quite safe in this neighbourhood, but of course we are still being aware. We intended to spend some time resting our weary legs, sorting photos and updating our travel diaries, but as I type both girls have fallen asleep at 10pm with all the lights still on. We have had a beautiful day together exploring an area of Manhattan which we didn’t pre-plan. The only issue so far is slow internet connectivity, so today’s post comes without photos as they are taking a long time to load to the icloud! I will hopefully be able to revise this post to add some tomorrow.