OUR DREAM TRIP | 7 Day New York City Travel Guide

hey guys and welcome back to my channel i'm so excited to be sharing this video with you guys this was our dream new york city trip that we took back in may of 2022 and i'm finally getting around to sharing the seven-day itinerary that in our opinion is the perfect itinerary if you're spending eight days or seven days in new york so we first went from lisbon to madrid and then madrid to jfk which is one of the airports that serves the city you can also fly into newark in new jersey and lagardia but we find that jfk is one of the easiest ones to take public transport into the city so we decided to take a taxi which we don't usually do um but this time we were really tired and we got to our hotel we stayed at the double tree hilton really close to times square it was just a short walk away and trying to stay up we walked to times square and just walked around and took everything in i highly recommend staying in the times square or nearby the times square area i know it can be more expensive but you'll save a lot of time taking subways to and back your hotel and especially if you get tired easily so we stopped at this mcdonald's in times square because it has a top floor with a great view this was the amazing view we had from our room we had like a high rise room at the double tree hilton and we could see the empire state building from our room and i honestly just stared out the window forever so on day one we headed into times square and as you could see it was a little bit rainy um which also is kind of nice because there's no one around so we just enjoyed having like all of this space and we had breakfast at that mcdonald's i told you guys about and then went to see eminem's world and then we took a hop on hop off bus now these are usually not worth it in my opinion unless you get the new york city pass or the new york pass which is what we got i highly recommend the new york pass because you can do a lot of stuff that costs like 30 40 every time you go in for like one fourth of the price so we tried to do as many things from the new york pass as possible and we got the four day pass um which was enough because then we did some other things that are not included in the pass which i will share with you guys but yes the hop on hop off buses are included they have two different loops one that goes north and one that goes south and this one's the one that goes south so it went to the financial district in the afternoon we went to the madame tussauds again it was rainy but we really enjoyed it and it was part of the new york pass so again you really get a bang for your a buck for your bang no a bang for your buck if you get the new york pass it's not sponsored at all i just really like it and we took our time exploring all of the wax figures it's got a lot of like different interactive portions to the exposition so it's really fun to kind of just walk around discover take a bunch of fun pictures so after that we headed over to target we are not from the states so there's like all these treats that we wanted to try so we tried them on day two we hopped on the subway over to the financial district and path at train station it's just a beautiful area to walk around in it was a very sunny day um so just exploring this area by foot stopping for a coffee a bagel is honestly a really really good program and could take up a whole day if you really wanted to um here's us having some food inside the train station it's is gorgeous it's always really really busy then we went to pay our respects at the 9-11 memorial the two fountains in my opinion are gorgeous and it's also very somber but we thought it was worth visiting we went in the spring so the flowers were beautiful everywhere this is near battery park where we walk to um because up next we were going to go on a little kind of ferry trip cruise to um see the statue of liberty so we just decided to walk from the financial district next to the water all the way to where the ferry takes off and i highly recommend it because you get gorgeous views this was the statue city cruises again it's part of the new york pass um so it's amazing because it takes you to both islands if you want to go there's also a very cheap way to do this if you want to see the statue from up close you can just take the ferry um which is i think like two dollars but because this was part of the past we went into the actual island and we just got to see the statue of liberty from up close which my boyfriend thought was actually much smaller in real life as i said if you go in the spring you will get this gorgeous view of the city with like all of the cherry tree blossoming in the background it was breathtaking i actually didn't know about the cherry tree so this was a very pleasant surprise then we headed back to the financial district area and we went to see the one world observatory very worth it once again part of the new york pass i'm just like showing you guys um all of these things would be like 30 40 per person so i think in two days we already got our money back and then we got a complimentary drink um and enjoyed the view we had to stop for pizza and this cookie dough ice cream and then we headed over to washington square park we just walked around it was a very very busy area and we did a lot of walking on this day so if you are not a walker i highly recommend just taking the subway between destinations the subway pretty much takes you everywhere we did get a seven day unlimited pass which made the subway a lot cheaper um but the next place we stopped was the harry potter world store you could spend again hours and a lot of money in the store but it's definitely worth visiting even if you don't want to buy anything because it's just really entertaining and very cool our next stop was the empire state building once again part of the new york pass you guessed it and we were just like hitting all of the viewpoints on this trip because i definitely think that's one of the best coolest things about new york city is the view and it also has like an exposition as you go up but the view from the empire state building is breathtaking and at the end of the day we got on this really cool trip called the ride it's just so much fun you're my they just have all these actors appear on the street and they make it look like it was just a normal person and then they just start dancing it's super fun why'd she do that to me sophia this is my everyone say hi this isn't my phone i stole it welcome to new york it's home of crime after that we just headed back to the hotel and had some food because we were so tired this day was once again rainy so we decided to start the day back on the hop on hop off bus but this time we did the upstate tour which takes you through like central park and then we grabbed some crispy cream donuts and headed over to dave and buster's again we're not american so this to us is very exciting this is very close to times square something else we did that day was we went to see a broadway show you can snatch really inexpensive broadway tickets on a lot of different apps so i highly recommend checking out last minute deals while you're there this show we went to see birthday candles was one of those we paid 24 for our seats so that was awesome then we headed over to the newest area in new york it's hudson yards it's got the vessel and a shopping mall and it's just a very cool area to explore unfortunately you can no longer go to the top of the vessel due to some unaliving incidents let's call it that but it's still gorgeous to see from the inside then we headed over to the edge in our opinion this was the best viewpoint of new york city and it's also part of the new york pass but if you don't buy the new york pass and you only want to choose one viewpoint i highly recommend the edge or even the summit at one vanderbilt but i can't decide between the two but the edge was definitely a highlight and if you're brave enough you can walk over this kind of like see-through panel very scary it's beautiful inside it's got a bar a restaurant you could definitely spend a long time there and we just thought that it was a very worth it experience up next we had a sunset cruise and we walk there from where we were as you'll be able to tell i booked a lot of the new york pass activities next to each other just to make it easier to navigate so you're not going back and forth all day and the reason i booked this particular cruise which again is part of the new york pass so again a bunch of money that you're saving is because the sunsets and you can see the city from the river both at like sunset like daytime sunset and then nighttime and watching all of those buildings like illuminate and just shimmer is beautiful the sunset was also gorgeous it goes under all of the bridges and it's just really breathtaking i tried my best to like not film too much because i really wanted to take it in it's a two-hour cruise in total so it's just perfect if you've been walking all day to sit down and kind of take it all in i do recommend getting there early so that you're able to sit down and get good seats and i do recommend you take a jacket even if it's summer because it does get pretty chilly then the day we had some ramen because we were so tired we couldn't go to the restaurant and then we just went to sleep again for an early morning the next day on day four we woke up had some mcdonald's breakfast and got on the subway back onto the path train station and to new jersey this was maybe by far my favorite activity we got on a helicopter with this company called fly ny on fly neon um and honestly 100 worth it we got the tickets during black friday so we got an excellent deal for these i highly recommend you check out any deals they might have but if you have the budget for it this is something that i would recommend anyone who's brave enough to do because it's open door you get to dangle your feet over like central park and all of the buildings all of the bridges and i've never been on a helicopter before it was a little bit scary the takeoff especially the whole like no doors concept of the takeoff but once you're up there and taking in the view you kind of just forget that you're on a helicopter i don't know how to explain it one of the first places that stops the central park i literally have no words to explain this sensation and this experience it was honestly probably the coolest thing i have ever done in my life i had to like pinch myself to believe that it was real um i've heard that if you go also in the fall it's also very beautiful we went when the park was completely green because it was spring but just taking in the view honestly it's really hard to believe that this was even a real moment it took us all the way down to the south part of manhattan where you could see also like the 9-11 memorial um all of the buildings all of the bridges and the cool thing is that it loops around in both directions so if you're sitting seated on one side of the helicopter you get to see the view because it comes back around if that makes sense so for example when we go past brooklyn bridge we got like the optimal view and then it turned around and the two girls that came with us got the same view so it makes it really easy to take pictures um you're allowed to bring a camera on board they kind of strap it onto you we only took a phone um but you can do that if you want to as you can see they give you like a little handheld kind of device to like lock your phone in so that people aren't dropping their phones my hair was a mess so i would recommend pulling up your hair if you can because that was a mistake at night we went to see harry potter this was again something that was on my bucket list we actually got these tickets at the harry potter lottery so look that up if you're coming to new york city because you could win some very inexpensive tickets with very good seats i still can't believe we were lucky enough to win these i usually never win anything so that was cool and then days five and six were again pretty rainy days we decided to start our day off at macy's and just kind of shop um as you can see not our most fashionable moment we decided to pass by a bookstore and buy a book and drink a coffee and just take some time to stop for a little bit because the first few days of our trip were insane and then in the evening we had some drinks at the rooftop bar of the double tree hilton it has incredible incredible views of the city up there so we just had a really good time without even having to leave our hotel and the next day we headed on over to central station and we just enjoyed walking around seeing all of the details on the ceiling there's like this part of the station where you can like whisper into a corner and the person in the opposite corner can hear you so just spending some time walking around here is definitely a must and the other reason we saved this for last is because at the central station was where you'll find summit when vander builds this is not part of the new york pass and it is fairly expensive not for new york city but for us but if you have the budget i highly recommend you do it because it was really really cool the whole exposition is kind of like um it's really brand new and it's like an art exposition with lights the main room is covered in mirrors do not wear a skirt here by the way because you can see everything but you have like 360 views of all of the island basically it's beautiful you can see the chrysler you can see the empire state building you can take very cool photos of yourself in front of these buildings they make you wear these like plastic bags over your shoes because everything is like glass and mirrors so that things will get scratched it has these very cool art expositions and a gorgeous view of central park we didn't go to the top of the rock because we didn't have time but honestly i think i like this one better even though i can't compare there's like this interactive room with all of these cool like floating helium balloons and i got some really really cool pictures in this room so again one of the highlights of our trip it's also got like this glass box that you can stand over and take cool pictures at it's kind of scary so if you have vertigo very easily don't do it i also had one of the coolest piece of my life in this building because you could see central park from the toilets which honestly amazing we went to the apple store and then we just wandered around in central park it's really easy to have a good time in new york without too much money because you can just walk around and see so much cool stuff without actually having to go inside anywhere that i just recommended for that so if you're on the budget it's definitely easy to do a city like new york you just have to find really good deals and eat like hot dogs and pizzas from stands and not really sit down at a lot of restaurants you'll notice that we never really sat down at any restaurants because we just really wanted to use a lot of our money for experiences on this trip so we had a lot of our food on the go which isn't to say that it wasn't good it was amazing it's just not something we wanted to spend money on this trip but for example in our upcoming japan trip we are going to sit down a lot and eat a lot so this was just a personal choice and to end our trip we walked over the brooklyn bridge another must do another thing that's free it's beautiful if you want to be able to take good pictures you have to come in like early morning because as you can see trying to take a picture right now was really chaotic and then we just went over and i also took a very cool picture here um miraculously i managed to not get anyone in the shot um so yeah we explored dumbo we had some food we walked around and honestly it was a very very nice way of ending our trip um just exploring the dumbo area and having some food we stopped at the timeout market for some food and we really enjoyed it i call this our last day it wasn't really a day we just had the morning so we walked over to brian park and kind of just like had breakfast enjoyed the views and we only had two hours in the city this day so it's not like a full day and then we got on the subway back to jfk um to get on our flight back to madrid and then to fly back home to lisbon i hope you guys like this video if you did please give me a big thumbs up and don't forget to subscribe to my channel and if you think i missed something really big that you'd recommend please leave it in the and i will see you guys in the next one bye