Exploring Times Square and Midtown
Here are some tips on maximizing your time in NYC's best known attractions.
Read MoreNYC + Iceland: Airbnb
Since the Airbnbs are what started it all, I think it's appropriate to make a post solely about our Airbnbs. I'll link to their Airbnb listings with a little more in-depth reviews. I also thought some of our hosts were so interesting, so I linked to my Someone I Met blog in the paragraphs as well.
16 March - 18 March: Midtown, NYC - Hilary
It was Tam's first time in NYC ever. Ever. For that reason, this Airbnb was really great. It is super close to a lot of the tourist stuff, like the Rockefeller, Times Square, Nintendo World, and 5th Avenue. It was super close to subway stations, which made it easier to get around to different neighborhoods. A lot of NYC is walkable from here, and we really enjoyed just strutting around.
The Airbnb itself is a little small, but it did have an elevator and rooftop access. The roof wasn't super amazing since it's an older and smaller building, and it happened to be covered in snow when we were there. Overall though, if it's your first time in NYC, this is the Airbnb you want to be at.
Cold day in Midtown.
19 March - 23 March: Akureyri, Iceland - Pétur
So this is the Airbnb that started it all. It's important to point out that our unit was one of 3 that were in the same property/house. The walls were mostly insulated and all those things are fine and dandy, but the view was beautiful. Because the home is outside of the main city of Akureyri, you're actually overlooking the town at night. It also made it amazing to watch the Northern Lights during dinner on our first night.
Akureyri isn't somewhere I would recommend staying very long during the winter. It's pretty remote considering you can fly there or drive 6 hours along Road 1. That aside, it was a super relaxing aspect of our vacation because we spent a lot of time just chilling out and driving.
23 March - 24 March: Höfn, Iceland - Einar
This Airbnb was a last minute booking, as we originally were going to sleep in the car, like it was a camper... But that didn't pan out as the weather was shaping out to be much colder than it traditionally is each year.
We stayed in Glacier Inn, and it was basically a house treated like a hostel. It was super clean and I appreciated that, but I definitely would say I'm not a fan of forced community interactions. The other guests were nice. If your'e looking for quiet time like we were, then you end up looking like a snob for not interacting. Most of the house is living room and kitchen, so it felt like the experience is centered around having a shared space.
24 March - 25 March: Eyjafjallajökull, Iceland - Ármann
This Airbnb is cool because it's so close to all the really famous waterfalls on the southern half of Iceland. I think it can be off putting because you're literally on a cow farm, and it smells like it outside. The inside is very clean and the rooms were really nice. The story of the host is even cooler. I detailed some of it on my other blog. Since the only common area is the kitchen, you can duck out whenever you're done and not feeling up to chatting with people.
25 March - 28 March: Reykjavík, Iceland - Ólöf
This place was great! The Airbnb is an annex in the back of the property. There's a reasonable amount of street parking, and it was literally a 5 minute drive from downtown. The host was super nice and the Airbnb felt like it was just a super nice apartment. Since the travel time was so short to town, it was super easy to drop stuff off at home and head right back into town.
28 March - 31 March: Williamsburg, NYC - Melanie
Time travel is a thing! We traveled back into time to get to Williamsburg. I don't know if you noticed, but I specifically pointed out elevator on the other NYC Airbnb. It's important because this one was a walk-up, so there were no stairs... And we (Tam) were carrying bags up 4 floors. Williamsburg is super trendy and really great to walk around, while pretty accessible to Manhattan. The roof was excellent here, and we had a beautiful view of the NYC skyline. According to our host, there's a lot of good food in the area as well.
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I'm a huge supporter of Airbnb, but I also understand the strain it can put on neighborhoods. While I know that many hotels are against Airbnb because it is a competitor, I can see that there is a market for both. It just depends on the experience you are looking for.
That being said, I recommend looking into the laws of the places you're visiting before choosing to rent through Airbnbs. As with anything there's always a risk. I do want to say that I like how Iceland handles Airbnb regulations, which requires a level of communicating with your neighbors before doing it. Unfortunately, I can't find that article anymore... But, I know NYC is trying to become stricter with it due to high cost of rent and living.
Either way, do it at your risk, but also have fun looking! You can choose your experience through Airbnb, and it's all part of the fun.
Trip Preparation for Iceland and NYC
When we decided to make the trip, it was kind of a spur of the moment. It all started with us looking through my former coworker's Iceland pictures... And a look at this Airbnb.
To be clear, we went around booking the vacation a little backwards, maybe because we were set on going to see the Northern Lights as a result of the Airbnb. In fact, we ended up booking the Airbnb first because it was what we fell in love with first. I won't review it here though, it'll come up as I blog in the coming posts.
It took us a few months of planning, and through our discussions we kind of amassed the following tools and tips to help us out.
Google Trips
If you use gmail as your primary email, you probably know it scans your emails to give you targeted ads. If you didn't already know that, you know it now. The reason this feature is nice is because Google Trips is an app that consolidates as much of your trip information as possible based on your emails. It also recommended nearby attractions and offered an offline map of the city (if available). It has some other tabs, which we didn't use as much because of the following.
Google Maps
Google Maps is great, especially if you do most of your planning on a computer. You can create maps with your own landmarks, indicators, and share it with people. It was really nice to be able to whip the phone out and see what was nearby without having to look at a list first. The map was the list. Google Maps and Google Trips don't speak very well to each other, and it's a little clunky when it comes to sharing it. We relied heavily on this while planning what we wanted to do, and used it while we were trying to find something new to do in NYC.
Hawaiian Airlines
I love Hawaiian Airlines. I like the service and I'm generally willing to pay the premium on their tickets because of it. Since I like flying them so much, and because they do a lot of direct flights from major cities, I signed up for their promotional emails. I also encourage people who want to fly with them or are looking for good sales to sign up for it.
Hopper
Hopper is an app that monitors flight fares across all airlines. Promotional emails are good, but something monitoring them for you is better. You can set dates in the app, and scroll through different months to be able to see the trends throughout the year. This is a little bit more convenient because you'll get notifications instead of checking your spam folder. This was how we knew when to score our $800 tickets, round-trip, direct flights to NYC... on Hawaiian.
OneNote
Neither of us have been somewhere cold. Ever. We used OneNote to keep track of our flight itineraries, Known Traveler Numbers, budgets, research on cold weather, checklists, you name it. It's easy to share, and available on literally any platform.
TSA Pre-Check
$80 for 5 years? Why not? It's useful if you're flying domestically. You could also do Global Traveler, which I hear is a little bit more stringent and costs more. Either way, it becomes easier to travel through TSA without all the nonsense about liquids and shoes and computers. I'd give yourself at least 3 months before your intended travel dates, just in case it takes a while. I think it only takes about 6 weeks but better safe than sorry.
Youtube
Youtube makes it to the list because it helped me stay excited for the trip. 9 months is a long time to be planning something, and the time equivalent to having a baby. Youtubing things people like to do, see, eat... Or maybe things you want to do, see, and eat will help you get an idea of whether or not the experience is one you want.
Lyft
Tam used a referral with Lyft to get $5 off our first 10 rides. Definitely a good deal around the city, especially since we used it less than that! Sign up before or after your flight to maximize the time limit they have on you redeeming your referral promotion.
Ask all the questions!
I think something that helped our vacation was my willingness to ask my former coworker what he did. People are generally willing to answer questions. The most anyone will ever say to you is no (or some equivalent to it), so ask away!
I think that's about it for our preparation. Other apps came up, but I'll get to that since it's a large part of our storytelling. It might be boring, but is totally necessary to having tons of fun!
28 February 2017
Someone I met today is from New Zealand.
I love New Zealand. I will tell anyone who wants to listen how much I love New Zealand. It's beautiful, the people are nice, and it's just so amazing to see such a place. Anyhow, the guy and I got to talking. We shared things we love about New Zealand and what we love about Hawaii. I told him about my trip there, and it turns out he was from Hamilton... The exact same place we visited.
"You know, the people here are so nice."
"Totally, I just love how welcoming everyone is here. It's such a nice place to live."
"Yeah, so you know... I was walking on the North Shore, and this guy threw me a shaka. You know that's a gang sign in Hamilton? I was like a little confused because you don't do that here. I can't even wear red because it's like a gang color."
"The shaka is a gang sign?!"
"Yeah!"
Well. Now I know.
31 January 2017
Someone I met today was a woman taking her grandma on a cruise. She works in real estate, and has been since 1989. I mentioned that was older than me and she exclaimed, "You make me feel old! I've been working too long."
The reason for her trip was because her grandma wanted to go to southeast Asia, even though neither of them had been before. They were going to Vietnam first, then heading to Singapore to do a cruise. She was super excited, and I told her that my friends who have been there said some of the food is very spicy!
I recommended she try sup tulang, since she'll be in Singapore anyway. She'll be gone for 3 weeks, so I hope they have a good time!
30 January 2017
Another day of lazing around at home, which works for me because I had a late-onset hangover... Like 16 hours after I stopped consuming alcohol, and now I have a fat headache. I didn't know I could feel headaches in my nose.
Anyway, shout out to my Uber Drivers. The woman I talked to 2 days ago and I had talked about how weird it is in America to live so far from your family. This echoes a couple of different conversations I've had with my Uber drivers about living away from family.
When I was in Dallas, my Uber driver was from somewhere in Africa, and he worked for a long time to get his son through school as an electrical engineer. More recently, my Uber driver in Seattle was from Ethiopia, and he lives with some of kids.
Since it was a while ago, I can't recall the exact conversation. His youngest kid was still in high school and the oldest one was in college. He was also in college studying nursing, so we talked about the college experience here. I recalled the hostel keeper from Ethiopia that I had met in NZ. I'll have to talk about him some other time, but about how he lives with his sisters after fleeing the Ethiopian Civil Wars. But even though they fled to Australia and then NZ, they stayed together anyway.
With all of these people, we agreed that family is really important to us... And something we observe that's bizarre is that in the US, everyone is ready to leave home at 18, whereas in other places, it's pretty standard to be close to your family members and interact with them more frequently.
That's something I kind of wish was valued more in US culture I guess, especially since I see that it isn't.