New York: Day 1 – getting our bearing and our shop on

Our first full day in New York!  Marc was super excited about EVERYTHING.  We are staying in Long Island City (“LIC” – look at me with the local lingo) in the borough of Queens.  I have never thought of staying here before but I am glad we are.  We found an apartment through airbnb staying with a lovely artistic couple and their super fluffy cat.  The apartment is close to the subway and only two stops from Manhattan.

It's a pretty big apple.

Our train station over in LIC

We woke up early with the plan to shop for all the essentials we had been missing from South America.  Namely, an iPad, fashionable clothes and soy milk.  We caught the train to Lexington Ave (first stop in Manhattan) and hit the chain stores, Urban Outfitters, H&M and my beloved Zara.  We then zig zagged our way down to Times Square. 

Marc of late has become obsessed with the NBC TV series 30 Rock, so we made a stop at Rockefeller Centre and of course the Lego store there.  On our way to Times Square we stumbled upon Magnolia Bakery, conveniently no longer in just one location!  For the boys, Magnolia bakery is known for its cupcakes (often credited with starting the cupcake craze) and was made famous by the HBO series Sex and the City (amongst other TV shows and films).

The lego version is much cooler.

That Magnolia Bakery bag contained 2 flourless chocolate cupcakes and a tub of their banana pudding.  Soooo good!

After feeling thoroughly overwhelmed by the crowds in Times Square we made our way down Broadway to one of my favourite buildings, the Flat Iron building on 23^rd Street.  Here we wandered through the awesome food markets and planned the rest of the afternoon.  We decided we needed to get a little more shopping out of the way and Marc needed to replenish his white Hanes t-shirt stock so I suggested we tackle Century 21.  For those of you who have not had the pleasure of experiencing the marvel that is Century 21 let me try and explain it to you.  It is like the Boxing Day sales combined with the hype that was Krispy Kreme when it first came to Australia.  EVERY DAY.  It is like a button down shirt and vest sale in Fitzroy (hipsters go crazy for that shit).  Or any kind of sale combined with Asians.  Pure vicious pandemonium.

Once all wholly necessary items had been purchased we started to make our way home.  I wanted Marc to experience Whole Foods Supermarket (I have a thing for supermarkets) and we thought we would grab a quick healthy dinner whilst we were there.  We went to the Time Warner Centre in Columbus Circle and again were overwhelmed by the number of people too lazy to cook for themselves.  Our final stop before we made our way back to LIC was the Apple store on 5^th Avenue, which in case anyone is interested, is open 24 hours a day every day of the year. 

We were both utterly exhausted from day one in NYC so we had an early night in preparation for day two!