New York City: Day 5 - April 25

Last day in New York! Our flight wasn't until the early evening so my mom and I spent the morning visiting the last few places on my "NYC List".

While waiting for Macy's to open, we did a bit of shopping at H&M. We didn't have any room left in our luggage for more clothes but we did have space for accessories! In hindsight, I should have bought an umbrella there - first rainfall back in Toronto and my umbrella broke :( Also, I was watching Fashion Star the previous night in the hotel and that show is much more interesting when I actually have a chance to buy the clothes in stores the next day. To waste more time, we browsed Old Navy. There were a few basic striped tees I wanted to get but I figured they would have them back in Toronto and I didn't need them desperately. Turns out we don't have them in Toronto...why?!

Macy's finally opened at 10am and there were so many people rushing to get in! You'd think they were giving away free handbags or something. We walked all nine floors of Macy's and our feet were dying. We went up to the 9th floor specifically because they were selling furniture up there and we figured we could rest on a couch...but there were sales clerks at every corner! It was so hard to find a spot to hide from them, haha.

At 11pm, we headed back to The New Yorker Hotel to lie down on our bed (5 days of constant walking and shopping, exhaustion was finally catching up) and then we checked out by noon. For lunch, we decided to check out one of New York's best pizza joints: Grimaldi's. Their original restaurant is in Brooklyn but we went to the one on 6th Avenue. Funny story: I had the address of Grimaldi's written down and we were standing at the right intersection but I couldn't find the restaurant! We were standing right across from it...I was not expecting it to be inside a church!

A "small" regular pizza - mozzarella, tomato sauce, basil

The pizza was delicious and super thin. I don't know if I would call it the best pizza I've ever eaten but I'm not that picky with my pizzas. As long as there's no mushrooms or olives, I'm good. After lunch, we walked over to Madison Square Park. The plan was to get a shake from Shake Shack but we were too full (and the line was long) so we just rested on a bench, checked out the Flatiron Building and enjoyed the sunny weather instead.

Our view of Empire State Building from the park

One of the places I've always wanted to check out in the States was Pinkberry. I know we've got Menchie's and a bunch of other frozen yogurt places in Toronto now but I still really wanted to go. Thanks to my pre-vacation researching, I knew there was a Pinkberry in Koreatown so off we went!

I was expecting Pinkberry to be self-serve like Menchie's but everything is behind the counter. The guy working there was really nice and asked if it was my first time. He helped explain everything and let me taste test their yogurts. I ended up going with their peach frozen yogurt and lychee (the Asian in me couldn't resist). To top it off, I got mango, strawberry, sliced almonds, and granola. It was a great mix of flavours and textures. I know I've only been to Menchie's once but I really thought Pinkberry's frozen yogurt was way better. It's not cheap but it sure was a delicious indulgence.

By this time, I ran out of places to check out on my NYC list and my mom is never any good with deciding where to go so we went back to the hotel. We still had a few more hours to waste before heading to the airport but I was tired and admittedly, getting annoyed with my mom's indecisiveness. I planned our whole trip and the one time I asked her to decide what to do, she couldn't decide on anything! I also like being super early at airports so we decided to just check out our luggage and head to LaGuardia. I had a pretty good idea of how to get to the airport but we decided to double check with the concierge at the hotel. Um, they don't know anything. They gave my mom some roundabout route and said after getting off the subway we would have to take a taxi when we knew for a fact that there was a bus since we were on one just 5 days earlier. I don't know if they were doing it just to persuade us to take a taxi but I decided to ignore whatever they said and just go my own way. I was worried about rush hour crowds but everything went off without a hitch and we didn't even have to wait for the bus to the airport. Success!

We were 2.5 hours early for our flight and we found out that there was another flight to Toronto in 20 minutes. They put us on the standby list and we powered our way to security (which only took like 5 minutes) and got to the gate with 10 minutes until takeoff. I felt like we were on The Amazing Race! And then we found out it cost $75 per person so...never mind. Maybe it's all those long commutes to school but I'm totally cool with spending an hour listening to my iPod and doing a crossword.

After a delayed flight and finishing up the latter half of The Descendants, we were home! I love travelling and visiting new places but there really is nothing like home.